


The Memory Remains

by FriendofCarlotta



Series: Memory [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Castiel in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Dean Winchester has another existential crisis over what's real, Hand Jobs, Just a little bit though because we have enough angst to deal with in our lives right now, M/M, Mentions of drug abuse and addiction, POV Dean Winchester, Post-Canon, This is basically a very long domestic drabble with cases and a little bit of angst thrown in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:21:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23369155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FriendofCarlotta/pseuds/FriendofCarlotta
Summary: With Chuck defeated, Dean's trying hard to get his head back in the game. What he needs is a bit of peace and quiet, and maybe a nice, straightforward hunt.What he most definitely doesn't need is this thing about monsters trying to summon some kind of hermaphroditic goat person. Or dealing with Cas, whose powers are still failing and who is acting more human in increasingly disconcerting ways.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester/Eileen Leahy (background)
Series: Memory [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1694674
Comments: 73
Kudos: 206





	1. Twigs & Twine & Tasha Banes

**Author's Note:**

> This is by far the longest thing I've ever written for this or any fandom. I'm so happy you're here, and I encourage you to leave all the comments and let me know how you liked this. 
> 
> You'll notice that this fic is named after an episode (ironically, one of the least memorable the show's ever done), as are all the individual chapters. Sometimes there's a pretty solid connection between the plot of the episode and what happens in the chapter, but sometimes it's more tenuous. Hopefully, this will all make sense.
> 
> Enjoy!

It turns out the hardest thing about getting your life back is figuring out what to do with it.

On Day 1 PC (Post Chuck), Dean barely even gets out of bed. He knew how to move around an obstacle course designed by somebody else. But now? Who knows what’ll happen if he so much as starts up Baby and drives into town to go shopping?

He tells himself this is a normal adjustment period. Just need to get back in the game slowly, that’s all.

In the end, it had all turned out to be surprisingly easy. Amara, just trying to enjoy life in her suite in Reno, was growing tired of Chuck’s world-ending antics and ended up absorbing his power into herself. Cosmic balance, darkness and light, all contained within a single person. Or a single omnipotent cosmic entity, more like.

Chuck, now, is just what he’d pretended to be for years: a regular human slacker with a less-than-firm grasp on appropriate social interaction. Not that most regular human slackers get their own heavily warded cell in Heaven’s lockup.

Amara had promised Dean that she wouldn’t interfere with the Winchesters’ lives directly in any way, giving him that smile that still sent a bit of an unpleasant tingle down his spine. It was enough to make him a little uncomfortable, but not enough to doubt her sincerity.

In any case, he can’t afford to doubt. It’d be too easy to drive himself crazy that way.

Sam seems to be adjusting a little bit better than him. He still leaves the bunker to go for runs in the morning, and he’s even made some half-hearted attempts at searching for a case. So far, though, he hasn’t tried to interest Dean in any. Dean isn’t sure whether that’s because he hasn’t found anything or because he knows Dean isn’t ready to get back out there.

After a couple of days PC, Dean started ambling around the bunker aimlessly, exploring remote storage lockers, clearing out pantries with dried goods dating back to the ‘50s and (very carefully, wearing gloves) sorting through the clutter of mysterious, dusty objects that seemed to be crowding every inch of new storage space he discovered.

He misses Jack. It’s not like Jack is never here; he just doesn’t _live_ here anymore.

When Chuck had stopped being a problem, Jack decided to use his powers to help prop up Heaven and make sure the souls there would still be safe. As far as Dean can tell, this involves only the occasional magical patch job, leaving Jack otherwise free to spend as much time with his mother as he wants. When he comes back to visit the bunker, once every two weeks or so, he looks happy.

So it’s all good really. But the bunker still seems too quiet without Jack, laughing cheerfully at some stupid movie he’s watching in the Dean Cave, or spilling over with enthusiasm while he talks about bonding with the other angels.

Dean had been worried that spending too much time with the winged dicks would wear away at Jack’s softness, but the opposite seems to be the case. Dean’s still having trouble believing that Jack has gotten Naomi to actually laugh at a joke, but Jack insisted it was true.

Then there’s Cas.

At first, he’d tried to help Jack up in Heaven, but Jack had gotten tired of Cas’s constant hovering and, eventually, they’d gotten into some kind of fight about it.

Dean had tried to ask Cas about it when he came back to the bunker, thrumming with barely contained irritation, but Cas had silenced him with a glare. Then he’d stormed off, slammed the door to his room and not emerged for three days.

The occasional cups of coffee Dean had left at his door as a peace offering always seemed to disappear pretty quickly though.

That was about two weeks ago, and Cas now comes out of his room occasionally to read or to help Dean clean out storage closets. He’s still not very talkative, though, and he leaves the room any time Dean tries to talk about Jack. Dean can’t help but notice that Cas hasn’t been back to Heaven. Hasn’t left the bunker at all, really.

Three weeks PC, Dean finally gets up the nerve to do something about that.

He’s in the kitchen, nursing a cup of coffee and using a piece of toast to soak up the last bits of bacon grease from his breakfast.

Cas stumbles in, frowning at the coffee maker like it’s personally offended him. “There’s no coffee,” he growls.

“That’s where you’re wrong, sunshine,” Dean says, not even bothering to look up from his plate. He doesn’t have to look at Cas to picture the glare directed fully at him now, about two seconds away from “I will literally smite you” levels of annoyance.

Fighting down the urge to grin, he swallows down his last piece of toast and points across the table, where the biggest travel mug they own is sitting in Cas’s usual spot.

Dean does look up now and is immediately entertained by Cas’s suspicious squint. “You put my coffee in a travel mug?” Cas says, sounding like someone who suspects an attack, but hasn’t quite figured out where it’s coming from yet. “… Why?”

Dean gathers up his empty plate and mug and strolls over to the sink. “Because you need to get out of the bunker.” Before Cas can snap at him, he adds, “And so do I. So we’re going for a drive.”

***

“You still haven’t told me where we’re going,” Cas says, the irritation in his voice increasingly less pronounced as his travel mug is getting lighter. They’ve been on the road for about 15 minutes.

“We’re going to see the world’s largest ball of twine,” Dean says, and allows himself a quick glance over at Cas. He could swear he sees the beginnings of a smile there before Cas frowns at him. “Why would we do that?”

“Because it’s fun,” Dean says. He taps his left index finger against the steering wheel; a nervous tic he’s had so long he’s barely even conscious of it anymore. “And because I’m pretty sure that whatever new rules we’re dealing with now, we’ll be alright hanging out with Sandy the Twine Lady.”

Sandy the Twine Lady is secretly one of Dean’s favorite people. She has that easy warmth that a lot of people in rural Kansas seem to have been born with, and even after years of looking after a roadside attraction, she still loves telling the story of how local farmer Frank Stoeber happened to find some loose twine back in 1953 and decided to keep winding until the ball was as big as his barn door.

When they get there, it’s a Tuesday afternoon, so it’s not too busy, and Sandy folds her arms around Dean like an old friend. He’s been here more times than he would ever admit to anyone, even Sam.

Sam likes to tell people about this place like it’s a joke, but Dean’s never thought of it that way. There’s something calming about coming here and adding a bit of twine to the ball. Sometimes, it even feels significant in a way he can’t quite put his finger on.

He somehow finds all that information spilling out of his mouth as he stands next to Cas, who is inspecting the giant twine monstrosity with all the intensity of a scientist scrutinizing an interesting specimen.

“I think I understand,” he says quietly. “Adding to the ball is like leaving a mark. Being part of something that has low stakes, but is still bigger than yourself.”

Dean nods, taken aback. “Yeah, I… I guess that’s it.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the length of twine Sandy had pressed into his hand almost as soon as he got there. It isn’t long — maybe 10 yards. He looks up at Cas, who’s now studying the twine where it twists around Dean’s fingers.

Dean hands the twine to Cas, who quirks an eyebrow at him. “Are you sure?”

Dean nods, and Cas reaches out, carefully sliding the bit of thick string out of Dean’s hand. “Thank you,” he says, like Dean’s given him some precious gift.

Dean snorts and waves it off, but can’t help a small smile as he watches Cas approach the giant ball and reverently, seriously wind his bit of twine around it, tying it off with a tight knot at both ends.

After that, they get back into the Impala and drive another couple of minutes to Waconda Lake. They hike along the water for about a mile, startling a flock of geese and some pheasants hiding away in the low brush near the water.

Cas pauses sometimes to take in the view, and Dean has to remind himself how small all this must seem to a cosmic being who saw the first fish crawl out of the water to taste the air.

They drive back to the bunker in silence, but it’s not a bad kind of silence. The sun’s gone down by now, and Dean chances a glance over at Cas every once in a while, sharp jawline outlined by headlights traveling past them, going the other way.

A couple of times, Cas catches him looking and looks back, eyes warmer and more content than they’ve seemed in months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of world’s largest ball of twine is disputed, but one of the aspirants is in Cawker City, Kansas, about a 25-minute drive from Lebanon. 
> 
> Sandy the Twine Lady is based on a real person. I’ve never met her, but apparently she really does enjoy telling the story of Frank Stoeber and his ball of twine. Hopefully I’ve done her justice. 
> 
> I realize this chapter has nothing whatsoever to do with Tasha Banes; she’s dead, after all. But I challenge you to find a better episode title to use for a chapter about a giant ball of twine.


	2. First Blood

“I found us a case.”

Sam just marches into the kitchen one afternoon while Dean’s making dinner, laptop open and balanced on his hands, grinning like he hasn’t just turned Dean’s carefully constructed PC routine upside down.

Dean freezes where he’s peeling an onion, feeling every muscle in his shoulders tense up one by one, like the world’s most irritating game of dominoes.

Sam, intuitive bastard that he is, immediately reads Dean’s hesitation and turns off the grin. “I mean, I thought, you know,” he stammers. “I thought it’d be good to get out. Get back in the saddle. Got to do it some time.”

Dean lets himself have half a minute, chopping up the onion with a little bit more force than is really necessary.

“A case, huh?” he says finally, eloquently.

“Yeah,” Sam ventures, sliding onto one of the benches at the big kitchen table. His laptop is precariously balanced on his arm as he reaches out a hand to dislodge some of the cutting boards and measuring cups that Dean tends to leave on every available surface when he’s cooking. “Nothing too complicated. Looks like a vamp nest, over in Missouri. Easy drive, easy hunt.”

Dean turns and levels a look at him. “You _trying_ to jinx us here, man?”

The grin hitches itself back onto Sam’s face like it never left. “You saying you want to do it?”

Dean shrugs and focuses back in on his onions, trying to hide the pulse of excitement surging through him at the thought of doing something real. Killing something.

He doesn’t say anything else, but he knows he doesn’t have to. Sam’s spent decades in close quarters with him; he can recognize Dean’s version of a “yes, but I’m not ready to let you have the win yet.”

Dean starts packing up his duffel that night, brain still moving on autopilot with that task, even though it’s been a while since they did an honest-to-God hunt.

Unfortunately, that leaves Dean free to focus on the constant loop of “What about Cas?” his brain is spouting at him.

Cas has seemed less tense since their little outing, a couple of days ago now, but Dean’s not sure he’s in any shape to be hunting. Doesn’t know what kind of shape Cas is in, actually. He’s still refusing to talk about the fight with Jack.

Not that Dean’s tried too hard to talk about it. Cas might have billions of years of practice at repressing his emotions, but Dean was raised by John Winchester. So yeah. He can repress with the best of them.

Dean’s very tempted to leave at the crack of dawn and just slide a note under Cas’s door. “Gone on a vamp hunt. Be back in a couple of days. Don’t break the coffee maker.”

But at a couple of minutes to midnight, he shuffles up to Cas’s door and raps a hesitant knuckle against it.

“Come in,” he hears, the two words somehow managing to sound distracted even through the solid, reinforced wood of the door.

Dean steps into Cas’s room, frowning as he takes in the line of dirty coffee mugs on the desk. Cas is sprawled out on his bed, wearing his full suit, but not the trench coat. That’s draped crookedly over the desk chair, somehow looking offended at being discarded so casually after everything it’s been through with its owner.

Cas moves quickly to turn off the TV, but not before Dean catches a glimpse of the screen out of the corner of his eye. “Cas, are you… watching _Jenny Jones_ again?”

Cas’s resulting eye roll takes half his body along for the ride. “I find it very instructive.”

Dean can’t help a little snort, and Cas’s outraged glare helps it escalate into a full-on chuckle.

“Instructive, huh? Didn’t know it was even on at this time of night,” he says, grinning like a maniac. He knows what Cas is going to say next.

Sure enough: “I have it on DVR.” It comes out between gritted teeth, like it’s some precious secret of the universe torn from Cas under threat of torture.

Dean’s tempted to retreat on that little victory until he remembers why he’s here in the first place. “So… Sam found us a hunt.”

Cas frowns. “You mean… us?” he says, pointing back and forth between them.

Dean shrugs. “Yeah, us. You, me and Sam. I mean, if you want.”

***

It turns out he wants, so the three of them set out for Missouri the next morning. Sam’s an annoyingly chipper presence so early in the day, but Dean finds he doesn’t mind that much. The anticipation of the hunt is already setting up a low-level hum in his blood, making him practically giddy. He’d been pretty nervous about getting back out there, but turns out this is exactly what he needs. His version of normal.

Cas, on the other hand, doesn’t say a word until they’ve already crossed over into Missouri. Dean’s always amazed that someone who doesn’t need to sleep can be so grumpy in the mornings.

After a nearly six-hour drive, they end up at The Barnwood Inn, a low-slung little place in the middle of a field just outside Humansville. It looks unassuming from the outside, but there’s free breakfast and the rooms are clean. Looking at the two queen-sized beds, Dean notes with approval the headboards fashioned from wooden slats of different lengths and alternating coloring, giving off a warm, handcrafted effect.

Not that he’s the kind of person who notices interior design touches. He’s just interested in woodworking, that’s all.

A quick, flirty chat with the plump, middle-aged woman behind the front desk decides their dinner plans, and they pile back into the Impala for a quick drive down Route 54.

Over burgers and tater tots, they draw up a game plan for the next day.

“So three bodies have been found in the area, all completely drained,” Sam says in a low voice, looking around to make sure their waitress is occupied somewhere else. “All along Osceola Road. Last vic was dumped at a playground.”

Dean blows out a breath through his nose and feels Cas’s shoulders tense where they’re touching his on the seat next to him in their booth.

“Did a child find him?” Cas asks. If Dean didn’t know Cas as well as he does, he would have missed the small hint of unsteadiness in his voice.

Sam nods, expression pained. “Yeah, a five-year-old girl and her mom.”

Dean’s hand tightens around his fork where it’s poking at the last onion ring. This is a part of the job he hasn’t missed.

He looks over at Cas. Cas always orders a burger too, even though he doesn’t need to eat. It’s mostly a way to avoid standing out. They can’t afford to be memorable when most hunts tend to leave them with bodies to dispose of. Usually, Cas even takes a couple of bites, muttering darkly about the taste of molecules. Dean’s surprised to note that today, Cas has polished off almost his entire plate of food.

Deciding not to mention it, Dean says, “So where do we think the vamps are holed up?”

Sam shifts a bit in his seat, settling in for the information download. “So there’s a couple of abandoned factories around town. Three, to be exact. Other than that, a few empty houses, but nothing that’s really big enough to house a nest.”

“Could it be a solitary vampire?” Cas asks, frowning down at the area map Sam has spread out over half their table, red Sharpie circles marking all the potential locations he’s identified.

Sam shrugs. “Maybe, but I doubt it. A vamp working alone would be more scared of attracting attention. It doesn’t look like whoever dumped the bodies made any particular effort to hide them.”

Cas nods, accepting the wisdom of this.

Dean picks up his napkin and wipes the last few bits of grease off his mouth. “No sense trying anything until tomorrow. I say we get a good night’s sleep, then scope out those factories in the morning.”

Cas squints at him. “How early in the morning?”

***

They usually get a single room to save money. Cas doesn’t mind going for a nighttime walk or reading quietly in a corner of the room while Sam and Dean get in their 40 winks.

Tonight doesn’t start out any different.

Sam uses up too much hot water as per usual, washing his precious hair, but after Dean’s finally had his turn in the bathroom, he slips under the sheets, missing his memory foam at the bunker, but happy the bed smells clean at least.

He’s woken up a couple of hours later by the sound of something heavy falling. Four decades’ worth of hunter instincts taking over, Dean vaults off his pillow, gun already in his hand. Heart pounding, he scans the room for a threat and notes that Sam has somehow managed to sleep through whatever just happened.

As his eyes slowly adjust, he looks around for Cas and finally finds him slumped on the floor next to the room’s small, circular table.

“Cas?” he whispers.

An annoyed grunt is the only response he gets as Cas heaves himself off the floor.

Dean thinks about letting it go, but curiosity gets the better of him. “Um… what happened?”

He thinks Cas isn’t going to answer at first, but finally he grumbles, “I fell off the chair.”

“You…” Dean tries to process that information as he tucks his gun back under his pillow. “How?”

All he hears is an annoyed huff, but it’s too late to back off now. “Seriously, Cas. Are you alright? Nobody just falls off a chair unless they’re sick, or drunk, or…” He pauses. “Oh.”

Not sure how to phrase this delicately, he just goes for it. “Cas, did you fall asleep?”

It takes a few more seconds of silence, but eventually he hears a quiet, reluctant “Yes.”

Amusement and concern competing for first place, Dean isn’t sure how to react. So he can’t really be blamed when his mouth starts talking before his brain catches up. “Come over here,” he says.

“What?” The single word thrums with something that sounds like caution.

“I said, come over here.”

Carefully, slowly, the shadowy outline of Cas moves to the table to close Sam’s laptop, the only source of illumination in the room. Dean hears tentative footsteps padding towards him; the sound too soft to come from loafers. Cas took off his shoes. Cas never takes off his shoes, unless he’s sitting on his own bed, and then only because Dean yelled at him once for getting the sheets dirty.

Before Dean can process this evidence of yet another new, decidedly human habit, Cas looms up next to his mattress. Dean shuffles back to one side of the bed and pulls back his covers.

“We’re not done talking about this,” he mutters, “but if you’re going to sleep, you might as well do it in a bed.”

Cas doesn’t move for a little while. Finally, he sits down and, experimentally, lifts one leg onto the mattress. Dean feels an irrational flare of irritation. “Take off the goddamn tie, would you? No one sleeps in a tie.”

“Oh,” Cas says, quietly. He tugs on his tie to loosen it, then starts to shrug out of his suit jacket too.

At that point, Dean turns around to face the wall, trying hard not to be that creep who watches his best friend take off his clothes.

He feels the mattress dip as Cas slides in next to him, maintaining as much distance as possible. Cas settles into a pose that’s so stiff, Dean can feel discomfort radiating off him even with his own face pointed the other way. It’s like sleeping next to a plank of wood.

A big, warm, extremely distracting plank of wood.

“Relax, Cas, I don’t bite,” Dean huffs on a sigh. “Unless you’re into that.”

He meant it as a joke, the kind of suggestive one-liner he imagines men trade with their friends. Not that he’s had a lot of those, other than Cas. Sam doesn’t really count. You don’t make lewd jokes about your little brother.

Somehow, Cas manages to stiffen even more. Dean sighs, grateful that the darkness is hiding the blush fighting its way onto his face. “Look, just… just sleep. I mean, if that’s a thing you do now.”

He shuts up before he can dig himself into an even bigger hole.

***

Turns out it’s the third factory on their list. Because it’s always the last place you check.

The faded lettering on the front suggests a former chicken processing plant, but the stench of blood inside hints at something altogether more unpleasant. Something human.

Dean is the first to go in, pressed tightly to the wall as he scans the cavernous space of what must once have been the main floor, eyes adjusting to the dark. All the windows have been covered up with newspaper or canvas, but it’s torn away in a couple of places, letting in precious little patches of sunlight. This isn’t where the vamps sleep, then. And yet, his gut is still telling him that they’re here, just out of sight.

With the slightest motion of his head towards Sam, Dean indicates that he’s heading to the right, down a hallway leading deeper into the factory. Sam nods and heads the other way.

Dean motions for Cas to follow him. Cas gives the slightest nod of acknowledgement, angel blade sliding out of his coat sleeve.

They stay pressed to the wall until they get to the hallway. Dean rounds the corner with his machete poised, ready to face any potential attacker. He’s met with silence.

Dean inches forward, sensing Cas’s solid presence at his back. Every once in a while, he can feel Cas twisting around to watch their six.

Out of nowhere, they’re surrounded.

Dean’s first warning is a shout from Cas as he twists in place, suddenly poised to spring. At almost the same moment, no fewer than three vamps appear at the far end of the hall, blocking the way forward.

Dean twists to assess the situation facing Cas. Another four vamps have materialized there. With mute horror, Dean recognizes one of them as the waitress who served them last night.

“Well, hello there,” she says. At the restaurant, Dean had thought her vaguely pretty, in that bland, blonde, wholesome way. Now, her face is twisted in an ugly sneer. “Thought you could just sneak into town, did you? Thought we wouldn’t realize there were hunters on our turf?”

The other vamps break out in weird, sycophantic chuckles. This woman is clearly in charge of this particular nest.

“Mindy, was it?” Dean says lightly, standing back to back with Cas and turning them both in a circle so he’s facing the thing that used to be a waitress. “I knew times were tough, but vamps having to wait tables to make ends meet… that just ain’t fair.”

Mindy shrugs, even that small motion betraying a quick, predatory grace. “Keeping a lookout at the only decent burger joint for miles happens to be a good way to spot trouble before it gets to our nest.”

Dean feels Cas tensing up at his back, his entire body a silent question mark. _What’s the plan?_ Dean hears the words as clearly as though they’d been spoken aloud.

He thinks hard at Cas, hoping it’s enough to count as a prayer. _I’ll keep her talking. When I touch your arm, we attack._

Outwardly, Dean puts on his best flirty grin. “You know, if you wanted to spend some time, all you needed to do was ask.”

Before he even finishes the sentence, he raises the hand not holding his machete behind his back, pressing his fingers into the side of Cas’s forearm. As if fired from a gun, Cas charges toward the end of the hallway, and Dean does the same.

Clearly wrongfooted, Mindy takes a second to adjust to a fighting stance. The three vamps surrounding her are quicker on the draw, and one, a heavyset man in his mid-30s, meets Dean halfway. Before the vamp can so much as raise the knife he’s holding, Dean lunges and slices through his neck with one powerful thrust. He takes a second to mentally pat himself on the back for always keeping his blade sharp.

Pivoting, he turns toward the next vamp, trying to block out the sounds of Cas fighting at the other end of the hall. He can’t afford to be distracted.

This one, a 20-something woman with long, brown hair, is a little better prepared for the fight, but not by much. She parries the first slash of Dean’s knife with her own and extends her fangs, lunging for his throat. Dean sidesteps and catches her off balance, decapitating her on the back swing of the same motion.

The third vamp goes down easy again, and then it’s just him and Mindy, facing each other with maybe 10 feet of distance between them.

Without a flash of hesitation, Mindy steps forward, slashing at Dean with a smooth motion of her knife. Dean’s an experienced fighter, but so is she, and if he’s honest with himself, his reactions aren’t as quick as they used to be. He angles his body away from Mindy’s blade, but his right shoulder is still too close. He feels metal slice through flesh, a blinding white trail of pain that reverberates through every fiber.

Somehow, mercifully, he doesn’t drop the machete. Instead, he grabs it with his uninjured arm, his left. Running purely on adrenaline now, he pushes through the pain and right back into Mindy’s space, slicing off her head with a roar that doesn’t seem to be coming from his own body, somehow.

When Mindy’s body falls to the floor, he mirrors it, wincing as his knees hit concrete and the white-hot pain in his shoulder resurfaces. Something warm and wet trickles down his chest. Dean blinks once, twice, trying to breathe.

Then, Cas is kneeling in front of him, blue eyes wide and scanning Dean’s face. Cas’s eyes light on his shoulder and he instantly reaches out, fingers touching Dean’s forehead. Dean waits for the warm, familiar trickle of Cas’s grace flowing through him, but it doesn’t come.

Confused, he frowns up at Cas, who is still kneeling in front of him, panic etched in every line of his face. Suddenly, it seems more important to reassure him than to stop the pain. “I’m fine, Cas. Don’t worry. I’ve had worse.”

And it’s true. His shoulder hurts like a mother and it’s still bleeding, but this isn’t going to kill him. With a groan, Dean levers himself up with his uninjured arm. “Let’s go find Sam.”

***

In the end, Sam is the one who finds them, near the door where they first went in.

“There were four vamps waiting for me down that way,” he says, sounding almost bored. “But they weren’t exactly well-organized. Wasn’t too bad.”

Sam takes a perfunctory look at Dean’s shoulder and agrees with Dean’s assessment: he’s had worse. They root around Baby’s trunk until they find a clean cloth for Dean to press against the wound and stop the bleeding, then head back to the hotel.

Cas’s eyes still seem a little wider than normal, and he doesn’t say a word on the drive back.

When Sam settles in on the bed next to Dean with a bottle of whiskey, a needle and some dental floss, Cas abruptly rises from the chair where he’d been slumped and speedwalks out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Sam frowns at the closed door. “What’s wrong with Cas?”

Dean hisses as Sam starts dabbing at his wound with a whiskey-soaked towel. “Gimme that,” he demands, reaching out for the bottle and taking a swig.

Sam raises an eyebrow at him, his way of saying that the question’s still out there if Dean would care to address it.

“He tried to heal me and it didn’t work.”

Sam gives him a sharp look while he threads a bit of floss into the eye of the needle. “He was eating last night.”

Dean nods. “Yeah, I noticed.” He pointedly doesn’t mention that Cas fell asleep, and certainly not that the two of them shared a bed for a few hours. By the time Sam and Dean had woken up that morning, Cas had been back in front of Sam’s laptop, looking for all the world like he’d spent the whole night there.

All told, it takes about half an hour for Sam to stitch up and bandage the wound. Dean takes a shower after, making sure not to get his shoulder wet.

When he comes out and levels a glance at Sam, Sam shakes his head. Cas hasn’t been back.

“I’ll look for him,” Dean decides, trying to look annoyed to mask his anxiety. Something is wrong with Cas. Has been wrong for a while, and Dean’s been too much of a chickenshit to ask him about it.

Sam looks like he wants to say something about resting up and letting that shoulder heal, but Dean whips out his patented “I’m your big brother and you don’t get to boss me around” look. Sam’s staring down 40 these days, but that look still works. Grumbling quietly, Sam grabs his overnight bag and heads for the shower.

***

It turns out Dean doesn’t have far to go to find Cas. He’s half-leaning-half-sitting against the Impala’s hood out in the parking lot, staring morosely at the flat, empty landscape surrounding the court of the inn.

“Enjoying the view?” Dean says with a forced grin, settling down next to Cas.

Unthinkingly, he puts his hands onto the hood and leans his weight onto them. A stabbing pain in his shoulder reminds him why that’s not a good idea. The sharp hiss is out of his mouth before he can hold it back. Cas looks up at that, expression pained like he’s the one who got his shoulder torn into.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” he says quietly.

That was more or less the last thing Dean expected to hear. He’s gotten so used to irritated glares and short-tempered retorts lately that he doesn’t know what to do with this softer, quieter version of Cas.

“About what?”

Cas reaches out a hand as though to touch Dean’s shoulder, but seems to think better of it halfway through. “You got hurt,” he says instead, voice still so quiet that Dean can barely hear him, even in an empty parking lot in the literal middle of nowhere. “You got hurt, and I couldn’t heal you.”

Dean shrugs, which isn’t helpful, and he really needs to remember that his shoulder is out of commission. “It’s fine, Cas,” he says, the sincerity of the sentiment somewhat undermined by another hiss. “This hunt actually went pretty well for our first time back out after Chuck. I’ll live.”

Cas looks down at his shoes, clenching his jaw so hard it hurts to even look at. “You will this time. But what about next time, Dean? What if…”

He doesn’t seem to want to finish that sentence, so Dean says, “It’s the job, Cas. I get hurt. I’ve been doing this for, God, more than 30 years now. And I’m still here.”

Cas looks like he’s got about five different things to say to that, but doesn’t know which one to pick, so Dean keeps talking.

“What I really want to know is what’s going on with you.”

Incredulous, Cas says, “You want to talk about _me_ now?”

“Yeah, you, dumbass.” He hadn’t meant it as an insult, but it comes out kind of sharp anyway.

Vaguely, Dean realizes he’s worried. And when he’s worried and doesn’t want to look at it, he gets angry instead. “What the hell, huh? You sleep now, for God’s sake. And you were eating too. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

Cas looks like he wants to deny it, but apparently realizes he doesn’t have even a single leg to stand on with that argument. So he sighs, and says, “I told you my powers are failing.”

It’s true, and Dean remembers that conversation all too well. It was the day Rowena died; the day he and Cas had their big fight. He tries not to think about that.

“Yeah, but… I thought when Jack fixed Heaven, he fixed the angels too? You know, gave them the full power-up, wings and all?”

“He did,” Cas says, slowly, and stares at his feet again.

Dean might not be the world’s smartest man, but he knows when to wait a guy out. Eventually, his patience pays off.

“I asked him to fix me,” Cas says, biting out the words between teeth clenched so painfully that Dean can practically heard them grind against each other. “He refused.”

“What? Why?”

Cas huffs a laugh, but there’s no amusement in it. “He started to. But the process, it…” Cas relocates his gaze from his shoes to the far horizon, like he’s hoping the rest of the sentence will just come flying at him from somewhere beyond the line of sight. “It involves connecting with the angel’s mind. Jack said he looked into my mind, and he saw that the… the power-up, as you call it, wasn’t what I really wanted.”

“That’s what you guys fought about,” Dean says, inserting his foot all the way into his mouth, because why not.

“Yes.”

“So…” Dean looks up at Cas’s silhouette, vaguely admiring how, even in the dim light of a motel parking lot, Cas is beautiful. Ethereal. Untouchable. “Is it true?”

Cas finally turns to look at him. “I don’t know.”

Dean feels uncannily like he’s woken up in an unfamiliar room in the middle of the night and needs to make his way to the bathroom, unsure of what obstacles will be in his way. He plunges ahead anyway. “What did Jack think you wanted?”

Just when Dean’s convinced himself that Cas isn’t going to answer this time, he does.

“He thinks I want to become human.”

Dean considers asking more questions, but he popped some painkillers before he headed out to find Cas; the good stuff. It’s making him sleepy.

“Come on inside, Cas. We can double up again. I don’t mind.”

Cas nods vaguely. “I’ll be there soon.”

Dean walks back to the room and takes off all but his undershirt and boxers, then slides under the covers.

About an hour later, he half-wakes when he feels the mattress dip beside him. It might be the painkillers, or the fact that Cas seems less intimidating in the warm darkness of his bed. In any case, Dean reaches for Cas’s arm and drapes it over himself. Cas stiffens at first, but then shuffles closer and relaxes into Dean’s back, his stubbled cheek a warm, reassuring pressure against the back of Dean’s neck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Barnwood Inn near Humansville is a real place, and they really do have neat woodworking touches in their rooms. The playground on Osceola Road is real too, though as far as I know, no one’s ever found a body there.


	3. Ouroboros

Dean has a pretty low opinion of his own intelligence, most of the time.

But he’s not so dumb that he doesn’t realize what’s going on with him and Cas.

From the first time they met, the tension between them was raw, crackling, alive with possibility.

Most people who know Dean would probably say it’s the guy thing that’s holding him back, but it isn’t that.

Dean’s always liked guys. Girls too, but that part was never a problem. When he was younger, he could charm any girl he wanted to, and do it out in the open. He still can, most of the time.

With men, it was different. He was always shy around a good-looking guy, like he didn’t quite know what to do with him. Every once in a while though, the guy would read him right, and there’d be a furtive kiss in an alley behind a bar, or maybe, depending on the number of drinks in his blood, a quick hand job in the bathroom.

So no, it isn’t that.

It’s the angel thing.

Over the years, Dean’s woken up many times with sticky sheets and thoughts of Cas — naked, writhing, pliant Cas — filling up his head.

But it’s not like he’s going to act on those thoughts. Because angels aren’t built for that kind of thing. They aren’t built to feel pleasure and emotion the same way humans do.

Of course, in a lot of ways, Cas isn’t your typical angel. But clearly, he’s enough of an angel that after more than a decade of standing too close and staring too long, he’s never made a move. So.

For the umpteenth time, Dean pushes that train of thought out of his brain and focuses on the task at hand, which just happens to be looking around the web for another hunt.

They just got back from the Missouri job yesterday, riding high on their first win PC. After a quick round of celebratory drinks, they’d all retreated to their rooms, neither Sam nor Dean admitting to the fact that they weren’t fully recovered yet. When you’re closing in on middle age, you don’t bounce back from a fight the way you used to.

Speaking of bouncing, Dean’s just scanning a news article about a mysterious disappearance in Montana when Sam comes waltzing into the room, carrying a dusty tome. He’s exuding that aura of exhilarated smug he only has when he’s done research and he’s ready to share what he’s found out.

“Whatcha got, Sammy?” Dean says, grateful for the distraction.

Sam sits down on the bed next to Dean’s desk. “So I didn’t get to tell you guys this, but after I killed those vamps, I got a look around the nest. Found this.”

Sam pulls out his phone and hands it to Dean. The screen shows a picture of a drawing on the floor of the warehouse. It looks vaguely like a pentagram, with a crudely drawn head in the middle. A head with two horns curling out the top.

There’s a copper bowl next to the pentagram, an unrecognizable mush of ingredients muddled inside. Dean’s never claimed to be an expert on magic, but he can recognize a summoning spell when he sees one.

Dean frowns up at Sam. “What were they trying to summon?”

Sam takes a deep breath, like he’s just been waiting for Dean to get around to asking that question. “At first I thought it was Moloch. You know, the…”

“Yeah, yeah. Man-eating goat guy. I remember.” It wasn’t one of their more memorable hunts, but there’s one thing he’s sure of. “We killed him though.”

“Exactly,” Sam nods. “And besides, the symbology of the pentagram is associated with something else.” Sam bends over the phone next to Dean and points at a symbol that’s repeated in each of the pentagram’s five corners.

It just looks like a squiggle at first, but when Dean zooms in on the picture, it takes on a more defined shape. A circle with two snakes inside, bodies twisting around a line down the circle’s center.

“Looks kind of like the rod of Asclepius,” Dean says, and he doesn’t need to look at Sam to know his eyebrows have risen at least halfway up his forehead.

Dean hunches his shoulders defensively. “What? I read.”

“You’re right,” Sam concedes. “It does. They have common origins in Greek mythology. The rod of Asclepius has one snake. But this one, with two snakes, this is the caduceus. It’s another staff, supposedly belonging to Hermes.”

“So what, a bunch of vamps were trying to summon a Greek god?”

Sam pockets his phone and shakes his head. “I don’t think so. The caduceus is also frequently associated with…”

“Baphomet.”

Dean gives an undignified little yelp and almost falls off his chair. Cas may be losing his powers, but he can still sneak up on a guy.

Sam looks up at Cas, expression alight with interest. “What do you know about it?”

“To be honest, I thought it was a myth. An invention by the crusaders to paint Muslims as devil worshippers.”

Sam nods eagerly, and Dean rolls his eyes at the ceiling. He knows the signs of an impending nerdathon.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too, but I found something in the Men of Letters files that suggests there’s more to it than that,” Sam says, reaching behind him for the book he’d been carrying around. Dean frowns at the thin, oblong layer of dust it leaves behind on the bedspread he just washed.

Sam opens the book where he’d shoved an unevenly torn piece of notebook paper into it as a bookmark. He turns the whole thing around to face Dean and Cas, and Cas nods sagely at the depiction that takes up all of the left-hand page.

Dean can’t help but notice though… “Um… it has tits.”

Cas directs a glare at the ceiling in a mute plea for the patience to deal with the immaturity of Dean Winchester.

“Yes, Dean,” Sam sighs. “Baphomet is often depicted as a hermaphrodite. You know, male and female parts.”

Annoyance flares behind Dean’s ribs, born of four decades of having his intelligence belittled, however unintentionally, by his college-kid brother. “I know what a hermaphrodite is, Sam. Jeez.”

Sam looks like he’s about to come back with some kind of annoyed retort, and Dean tenses in anticipation when, to his surprise, Cas interrupts them. “Didn’t Kurt Vonnegut refer to semicolons as ‘transvestite hermaphrodites’ once?”

The question is addressed to Dean, and something inside him opens and glows at the idea of Cas wanting to have anything approaching an intellectual discussion with him. “Um…” he says, which isn’t a great start, but he recovers quickly. “Yeah, yeah. In _Timequake_.”

Cas nods sagely, and somehow there’s nothing condescending about it. Only thoughtfulness. “Not his greatest, but interesting even for its failures.”

Dean nods with an eagerness he’s not going to let himself look at too closely. “Yeah, it ain’t _Slaughterhouse-Five_ , but it… reading it, it reminded me of time travel.”

He shoots an uncertain look at Cas, who is outright smiling at him now. Maybe, like Dean, he’s remembering their first trip back in time together. The one where Dean got to meet his dad before he became all rage and jagged edges. He smiles back at Cas.

Sam is looking back and forth between them like they’ve grown another pair of heads, and maybe a couple of extra limbs for good measure. “So… anyway. What I was saying.” He shakes himself, visibly trying to get the conversation back on track. “The Men of Letters never found any concrete evidence that Baphomet was real, but they thought it could be made manifest under certain conditions.”

Dean frowns. “You mean like a tulpa? Enough people think about it and it becomes real?”

“Baphomet has certainly enjoyed a resurgence in popularity lately,” Cas says thoughtfully. Then, he lowers himself onto the side of Dean’s desk with a small sigh, like he’s been on his feet too long. It’s such a human thing to do that Dean almost forgets to be disconcerted by their sudden physical proximity. Almost.

“Yeah, The Satanic Temple had a Baphomet statue made, as a kind of protest against government getting involved in religion,” Sam says, closing the book and tossing it back onto Dean’s bedspread, where it raises an actual little puff of dust. Dean takes a deep breath and decides not to pick that fight right now. Maybe later. “They’ve been displaying it around state capitols that have a monument to the Ten Commandments.”

Cas shuffles a bit on the surface of Dean’s desk until his back is leaning against the wall, then heaves another one of those contented little sighs. “I suppose if enough people came to see the statue, it could create a tulpa-like manifestation.”

Dean decides to shelve a lot of his questions about the whole “Satanic Temple” thing for later, when he’s not already feeling so vulnerable about his lack of a college degree or failure to keep up with the news.

Instead, he goes with: “But what’s with the spell? Why would a bunch of vamps be trying to summon hermaphro-goat?”

Sam shrugs, rising off Dean’s bed and grabbing the book. “Beats me.”

***

After that, Dean puts the freaky goat thing out of his head and gets back to life as usual. Jack comes by and visits for a few days, and Cas makes it a point to find a salt-and-burn case a few hours away.

Dean had looked over Cas’s shoulder while he was researching the case, and it seemed simple enough. Yet somehow, magically, Cas isn’t done dealing with it until after Jack’s already left the bunker.

When Cas does come back, there’s something melancholy about him. Dean hands him a beer across the kitchen counter and asks whether it was a tough hunt. Cas gives a negatory hum and sits down at the table.

Dean keeps working on dinner and is surprised when, a few minutes later, he sees Cas sneak another beer out of the fridge. Beer doesn’t affect Cas and he doesn’t particularly like the taste, so he never has more than one. He certainly doesn’t stumble a bit on his way back to his room.

But a lot of things have been different lately.

Over the years, whenever Cas was around, Dean felt like there was a small, tight thread of… something connecting them. With time, the thread grew stronger, tighter, more insistent in the constant tug that urged Dean to follow it, to close the distance between them and find out what lay on the other side.

Yet he never did, because no matter how strong the tug, there was always something pulling him in the opposite direction. Something about the vague aura of power around Cas, the slight crackle of lightning about him. It seemed like maybe if Dean got too close, all that power would burn him up.

It doesn’t feel that way anymore. Slowly, steadily, over the past few months, the power emanating from Cas has been fading. Even if Cas had never told Dean about his failing powers, Dean would have known. The thread connecting them is as strong as ever, but it doesn’t seem as dangerous anymore.

Dean sometimes thinks Cas can feel it too.

One night a couple of weeks after the goat conversation, they’re sitting in the recliners in the Dean Cave, watching _Die Hard_. Cas already knows how the movie’s going to end, of course, and so does Dean, but he’s been trying to explain to Cas the comfort of reliving something familiar. Cas doesn’t always understand when Dean tries to share these kinds of human experiences with him, but it seemed like he did that time.

When the end credits flash across the screen, Dean looks up to catch Cas staring. After more than a decade of being friends with Cas, Dean’s used to being examined by him, but there’s something different about this. If Dean didn’t know better, he’d describe it as heated.

“Do you, um…” Dean starts, annoyed at how flustered he sounds even to himself. “Do you wanna watch another one?”

Cas keeps looking at him for another moment, thoughtful. Then, he says, “I got you something.”

Dean is thoroughly wrongfooted. “You what?”

Cas shrugs, looking more human than ever. “Consider it a late birthday present.”

“Cas, my birthday was months ago.”

“A very late one then.” At that, Cas gets up out of his recliner and disappears. Dean suspects he’s supposed to stay put, so he does.

A minute later, Cas returns with a small package wrapped in newspaper and hands it over. “Happy belated birthday, Dean,” Cas says, and Dean could swear his cheeks are a little pink.

He can’t be blamed, then, for his own goofy grin. “Thanks, Cas.”

He rips open the paper and looks down at a DVD of _The Princess Bride_.

Before he can say anything, Cas interrupts his train of thought. “I saw you looking at it while we were shopping last week. You had that expression on your face that means you want something, but are too embarrassed to admit it.”

Dean can’t get himself to look up yet, feeling unaccountably naked. Still, he doesn’t miss the slight smile in the tone of Cas’s voice. “I looked at the memories of this movie that Metatron gave me, and I liked what I saw. I think we should watch it.”

Dean does look up then, and his breath hitches a bit at the look of open affection on Cas’s face. Before he can second-guess himself, he reaches out to where Cas’s hand is balled up on the armrest of his recliner. Dean squeezes Cas’s hand with his own, then brushes his thumb over Cas’s knuckles.

Cas’s features rearrange into an expression of quiet astonishment, mixed with maybe just a little bit of shyness. Dean gets up to slide the DVD into the player, feeling Cas’s eyes on his back the whole time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The image of Baphomet that Sam shows Dean and Cas is [here](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Baphomet). The page also has some more background on Baphomet’s history, in case you’re interested.


	4. What Is and What Should Never Be

Dean knows something’s up when Sam shuffles into the library one night and starts rearranging books on shelves. Looking up from his paperback, Dean leans back in his armchair and takes leisurely sips of his beer, enjoying the show.

Sam seems extremely focused on his task, but every 30 seconds or so, his eyes flick to his phone where it’s lying on top of the old wooden table.

After about 10 minutes of this, the phone buzzes faintly, and Sam shoots back to the table, unlocking the thing in three seconds flat. A huge grin immediately splits his face. When Dean chuckles, Sam gives an extremely entertaining full-body flinch.

“Something you wanna share with the class, Sammy?”

Sam flushes to the tips of his ears, but he’s always been less prone to embarrassment than Dean, so he says, with as much dignity as he can muster, “I got wind of a hunt in Colorado. Eileen’s in the area, so I asked if she wanted to team up for it.”

“Eileen, huh?” Dean says, hitching on his best shit-eating grin. “Sammy, you dog.”

“It’s not like that,” Sam says, even though the answering grin on his face says it’s most definitely like that.

Dean pretends to get back to reading his paperback, then remarks casually, “She said yes, then.”

“Yes. Yes, she did,” Sam says on a relieved exhale.

Sam heads out the next day, leaving Dean and Cas alone in the bunker.

It’s not like that’s usually a problem, but every time they run into each other in the kitchen or the library now, Dean remembers the feel of Cas’s warm hand under his, and the occasional shy smiles they’d traded the whole way through watching _The Princess Bride_.

Dean’s never going to admit to this, but he didn’t end up putting the DVD on the shelf with the others in the Dean Cave. Instead, he carried it back to his room and put it on his bookshelf there.

Somehow, that felt right. This was _his_ and, for whatever reason, it felt special. Maybe because, once Dean came to think of it, it was the first present Cas had ever given him in their decade of friendship. Like he’d suddenly understood why exchanging presents was a thing humans did.

Still, the persistent tension between the two of them is starting to make Dean feel like the walls are closing in, so he’s profoundly grateful when he hits on a news article about three mysterious deaths in a town in Kentucky, all three victims drained of blood but with none of the signs of an animal attack.

“Jinn, you think?” is Cas’s immediate reaction when Dean relates what he’s found out.

Dean nods. “Seems likely.” He’s not sure why he feels nervous about this next part, because it’s not like it’d make much sense to just leave a capable hunting partner behind and go by himself. “You, um, wanna… should we check it out?”

“You don’t want to wait for Sam to come back?” Cas asks, cautiously.

“Nah. Jinn take a few days to drain their victims, but I don’t know how long Sam’ll be. Might be another victim before he can get here.”

The smile Cas gives him then is worth everything. “Then yes. Let’s go.”

***

Dean’s not really sure how to bring up the whole sleeping thing. As in, whether or not Cas is planning on doing it. It seems like losing his powers is kind of a sore subject for Cas.

And that’s how they end up at the front desk of a motel in southern Illinois late the next afternoon, an awkward silence stretching in response to what should be a straightforward question: “You want a single or a double?”

The front-desk attendant, a kid who looks barely out of his teens, has just started to hitch his eyebrows and tap an impatient finger on the desk when Dean says “Double.”

At exactly the same moment that Cas grits out “Single.”

The kid has the nerve to heave a dramatic sigh, like the entire world, but especially the two idiots in front of him, is conspiring against him. “Well, which is it?”

After another 20 seconds of silence, the kid seems to take pity on them. He leans a little closer and says, quietly, carefully, “You know, I know how people get about this stuff, but I don’t judge. Seriously. Get the single if you want it.”

“Double’s fine, thanks,” Dean growls at him, even though it’s the exact opposite of what he wants to say. Still. He doesn’t need some punk kid at a front desk assuming… things about him. And especially not about Cas.

“Suit yourself,” the kid shrugs and hands over a key with an orange fob attached.

They follow the badly worn number 5 on their key until they find its mate along the ground-floor corridor.

The room is the dictionary definition of non-descript, with white sheets, white walls and pastel-colored, abstract paintings in cheap frames. At least it smells clean. When it comes to motel rooms, Dean’s always grateful for the small mercies.

He drops his duffel on the bed closest to the door out of habit; easier to get to the exit from there, just in case. Too late, he realizes Cas might have a preference too. Awkwardly, he reaches for his duffel and gathers it up again.

“Um… which one do you want to take?”

Cas gives him the barest hint of a smile. “You can take the one next to the door if you’re more comfortable there. I don’t mind.” The smile fades a bit before he continues. “I’m not sure I’ll be sleeping at all. It… it comes and goes.”

Dean nods, and silence grows between them until it feels like a third occupant in the room.

Way too late to be casual, Dean notices he’s still clutching his duffel, and lowers it back onto the bed.

He needs an exit strategy.

Thankfully, his stomach chooses that moment to growl. “I’ll, um, go scope out the dinner situation. I’ll bring something back.”

Cas nods. “I could go with you.”

“Um, no, that’s alright. I won’t be long.”

Dean grabs his wallet and phone where he’d dropped them on a table and heads out the door, picturing Cas’s disappointed expression even though he can’t see it.

***

A couple of hours later, over pepperoni pizza and a six-pack of beer, Dean feels himself start to mellow out.

There’s nothing good on TV, but they have a laptop and a Netflix account. Cas makes him watch _Orange Is the New Black_ , explaining with seemingly endless patience who all the characters are and what they did to get themselves locked up. Dean could probably pick up on that if he’d just pay more attention to the show, but he’s more interested in hearing Cas talk, so sue him.

Dean had put the laptop on Cas’s bed in an attempt to be something he’s not quite comfortable calling chivalrous, but in the end, his neck starts to hurt from craning it to see the small screen. When he rolls his shoulders to get the kinks out, Cas frowns at him and shuffles a bit to the side, shooting a pointed look at the resulting space by his side.

Dean shrugs like it’s no big deal and slides onto Cas’s bed, carefully leaving a couple of inches of space between their shoulders.

As he bends to pick up his third beer though, he settles back to find that Cas’s shoulder is now brushing against his. He’s not sure whether he’s changed position or whether Cas has, but neither of them comments on it.

Dean definitely doesn’t comment when Cas reaches out a tentative hand and puts it just above Dean’s knee, squeezing lightly. He does hold his breath for a second and go very still, like he’s spotted a shy creature in the wild and doesn’t want to scare it away.

When Dean’s lungs inform him that he’d better start breathing again or else, Cas still doesn’t move his hand, so Dean lets himself relax ever so slightly. He might even lean into Cas’s shoulder a bit more.

When Dean feels his eyes start to slide shut a little bit later, Cas nudges his shoulder. “You should go to sleep. We still have a fairly long drive tomorrow.”

It’s good advice, and Dean takes it. And if he falls asleep looking at Cas, who’s nodded off in the other bed, well, nobody needs to know.

***

They’ve been driving for a couple of hours, Dean watching the road and Cas watching the green hills of western Kentucky zooming past his window.

Dean’s well-worn copy of _Led Zeppelin II_ just started playing, Cas having fished it blindly out of the box of tapes that’s lived on the floor of the Impala for as long as Dean can remember.

When the melancholy opening chords of “What Is and What Should Never Be” come on, Dean lets himself relax into the soothing sound of Robert Plant’s voice.

_It only goes to show_

_That you will be mine_

_By takin’ our time, ohh_

_And if you say to me tomorrow_

_Oh what fun it all would be_

_Then what’s to stop us, pretty baby_

_But what is and what should never be_

Suddenly, Dean is extremely conscious of Cas’s presence on the bench seat next to him, a mere three feet away. He casts around for a topic of conversation, any topic.

The whole point of their trip is to hunt a jinn after all, so finally, he lands on: “Did I ever tell you about the time I got poisoned by a jinn?”

Cas tears his gaze from the trees flashing by outside and looks over, interested. “I don’t think so. Was it the kind that feeds on fear?”

“No, um, the kind that feeds on…” _Desires._ “The other kind.”

Dean’s already kicking himself. Of all the things he could have picked to talk about, he just had to stick himself with the most personal conversation possible.

“Oh,” says Cas, clearly giving Dean space to elaborate if he wants.

Dean sighs, knowing it’ll be weirder now if he doesn’t say anything else. “It stuck me in this dream world where I had a normal life. Mom was still alive. So was Jess.”

Cas frowns, trying to place the name. “She was Sam’s girlfriend.”

Dean swallows, flames licking up the corners of his mind just like they had the walls of Sam’s apartment all those years ago. “Yeah. When he was at Stanford.”

Trying to dispel the sudden surge of memory — the smell of singed flesh, the heat of fire, Sam’s stricken screams as Dean dragged him away — Dean says, “And I, um, I had a place of my own and I was dating this nurse, Carmen. She, um, she was just this girl I’d seen in a beer ad. Nobody I knew in real life.” He doesn’t know why he feels the need to add that last part, but he does.

Cas nods thoughtfully. “How long ago was that?”

Dean huffs a laugh. “God, man, I don’t even know. Long time. More than a decade for sure.”

The next question out of Cas’s mouth is entirely unexpected. “What do you think the jinn would show you now?”

Dean stills, an image flashing in his mind’s eye. _Himself, standing at the stove in the bunker’s kitchen, cutting butter for a pie crust. Cas next to him, peeling apples in nothing but a t-shirt and a pair of Dean’s pajama pants. The ones with the hot dog pattern. Cas leans over and whispers something in Dean’s ear. Dean smiles and kisses him on the forehead._

When Cas speaks again, Dean flinches so hard the Impala actually swerves a little. “I’m sorry, Dean. I realize it’s a very personal question. Even after all this time on earth, I’m still… learning about human boundaries.”

Dean clears his throat, trying hard to get back to something resembling nonchalance. “Um, yeah. No. I mean, it’s fine. Just… you know, same kind of thing probably. Normal life. Family.”

He tries hard to hold back the question on the tip of his tongue, but it comes out anyway. “What about you?”

Cas looks taken aback, and Dean quickly adds, “Um, I mean, like you said, it’s personal. We don’t have to talk about it. It’s fine.”

“No, we can,” Cas says slowly. “I was just trying to think.”

Dean watches the furrows deepen in Cas’s forehead as he considers the idea some more. Before Dean can stop himself, he says, “Would it be… getting back your wings?”

One of the many things Dean’s always liked about Cas’s face is how many emotions it can express with just the quirk of a brow or the slightest curl of a lip. Right now, though, his face is closer to blank than Dean’s seen it in a long time.

“Yes,” Cas says finally. “I guess it would be.”

Dean swallows down the sudden lump in his throat and switches his focus back to the road.

***

When they arrive in Campbellsville, Kentucky, it’s still early enough that they decide to head to the morgue after grabbing a room at the Super 8. (There’s no awkwardness over the size of the room this time. Dean’s not fool enough to ask for a single for two guys in rural Kentucky.)

A quick glance at the bodies confirms that their blood’s been drained and there are no signs of external injury other than a few small needle punctures. Definitely a jinn then.

“Do you think we should try to interview some of the victims’ families?” Cas asks as he pushes open the glass door of the municipal building, holding it for Dean to walk through behind him.

Dean shrugs. “Not sure there’s much of a point. What we really need to know is where the jinn is taking its victims, and we’re not getting that from the next of kin. We want a chatty waitress or a bartender. Get a read on abandoned warehouses, houses with a weird reputation, all that stuff.”

They end up heading to Bourbon Boutique, an airy place on Main Street with red walls and rustic wood accents. Dean glares at everything suspiciously — “Too much light in here. Floor’s not even sticky.” — but warms to the place when he spots the inscription on the blackboard behind the bar (“Alcohol! Because no great story started with someone eating a salad!”)

“Alright, I guess we could stay,” Dean allows, reluctantly, and slides onto a barstool, Cas taking his place next to him. Dean tries not to flinch when their thighs brush as they both try to get comfortable on their seats.

Their bartender’s name is Brandon, a wiry, six-foot guy with a shock of dark brown hair and a 5 o’clock shadow. Dean tries not to notice the fairly pronounced resemblance to Cas.

He also tries not to think too much about how easy it is to hitch on his trademark flirtatious smile as he launches into their cover story: photographers in town to shoot abandoned buildings being reabsorbed into nature.

It had been Cas’s idea, based on some photo essay he’d seen online the other day. Dean had tried to argue that they didn’t even have any cameras, but Cas had rightly pointed out that no one would know the difference.

It being a weeknight, the bar isn’t terribly busy, and before long, Dean is deep in conversation with Brandon.

“So you should definitely check out the old auto shop on Route 68, just past the Best Western,” Brandon is saying now, pouring Dean another shot of bourbon and leaning in just a little bit closer than the bar’s noise level really warrants. “And the old Hannity place up on Hunters Run. Beautiful house, but been abandoned for 20 years or more. Growing up, it was kind of a rite of passage sneaking in there and trying to make it all the way to the back door without freaking out.”

Dean gives Brandon a chuckle and a knowing little nod. “Man, the stupid stuff you do as kids, right?” Not that he’d know anything about that, but it seems like the kind of thing people with normal childhoods would bond over. Out of the corner of his eye, Dean notices Cas fidgeting.

“Cas, what do you think? Place sounds interesting, right?” Dean says, somehow feeling like he should be including Cas in the conversation, even though there’s no real need. Dean’s getting the exact intel they need just fine on his own.

Before Cas can respond, Brandon breaks in, “Of course, if you wanted the tour, I know my way around pretty well.” Dean looks back at him, and the guy is actually batting his eyelashes.

Cas makes a sound that tries to be a cough but sounds a bit too disgusted to pull it off. “I’ll be back,” he growls, grabbing his tumbler of bourbon and sliding off the barstool.

Dean looks after him, feeling just a little adrift.

“Want another?” Brandon asks, pulling Dean out of his thoughts and back into the pleasant buzz he’s nursing.

“Sure.”

After that, Brandon has to attend to some other customers, and Dean looks around for Cas, only to find him chatting with a group of people towards the back of the room. Dean tries to remember whether he’s ever seen Cas just walk up to a group of strangers in a social setting like this and comes up short. Maybe another one of the side effects of his fading powers. A sudden boost to his people skills.

Cas gets back to his seat about a half hour later, and they pay up. On the walk back to the parking lot, Cas still seems vaguely disgruntled and Dean, conscious of his buzz, makes the only peace offering he can think of.

“Hey, you wanna drive?”

Cas stops short. “Really?”

Dean tosses him the keys. “Sure. Just… you know, go easy on her.”

If Dean doubted his decision before, he doesn’t anymore when he sees the big grin splitting Cas’s face. “I will.”

They slide onto the bench seat and Cas starts the engine, looking pleased with the resulting purr.

Dean can’t help but enjoy the sight of Cas behind Baby’s wheel and shuffles a little bit in his seat to hide just how much he’s enjoying it.

“Not bad, right? Better than that crappy Continental.”

Cas looks at Dean like he’s insulted his firstborn child. “I _loved_ that Continental.”

Dean chuckles. “I know, man. Just teasing you.”

Cas huffs a sigh and pulls out of the parking lot. A minute later, he says, “So I met this woman named Maggie.”

Dean already doesn’t like her. “Maggie, huh?”

“Yes, Maggie,” Cas says, not even slightly bothered by the edge in Dean’s tone. “She’s lived in Campbellsville for 20 years. She said there are a few empty warehouses and homes around town, but easily the most scenic one is an old mansion on Pearl Avenue, near the north shore of the city lake. People have been trying to raise money to have it restored, but it’s never come together. The house has a reputation for being troubled.”

Dean frowns. “Huh. That sounds like the perfect jinn hideout. Weird that Brandon never mentioned it if it’s that well-known.”

Cas’s expression shifts to something so smug it would look more at home on Sam’s face. “I asked Maggie about Brandon as well.”

“Oh?” is all Dean can think to say to that.

“Yes. Apparently, he came to town about four months ago.”

Dean frowns at that. “Huh. He told me he’d grown up here.”

“I think we’ve found our jinn, don’t you?” Cas says, pointedly returning his attention to the road.

***

The house really is beautiful. Or at least, it used to be. There’s a wide, wraparound porch with decorative ornamentation where the support beams meet the second-floor wall. The left-hand side of the house has an honest-to-God turret, which would be a lot more impressive if the roof hadn’t caved in.

Still, in the moonlight, and if you squint, you can almost see the place just the way it used to look in its glory days.

Dean pauses in the front yard for a moment to take in the view.

“That kind of place could really turn into something if you put some work into it,” he murmurs, more to himself than to Cas.

Cas seems to hear him though, because he turns around and smiles at Dean. “Is that the kind of work you’d like to do?” he asks, hitting the nail on the head as per usual.

Dean fidgets. “I used to think so. But honestly? I don’t see myself retiring from hunting any time soon.” He grins, and it comes harder than he’d like to admit. “I still got some fight left in me.”

Which reminds him of the dagger, coated in lamb’s blood, that he’s currently holding. Right. They’re here on a hunt, not to plan out an HGTV special.

He nods at Cas, determined, and they set out for the front door. Dean goes in first, Cas at his back. The inside is quiet, but it’s the kind of quiet that seems artificial, like someone’s holding a hand over someone else’s mouth.

There’s a hallway in front of them, leading directly to a staircase. Another hallway branches off to the right. Dean cocks his head towards that one, motioning for Cas to take the stairs. Cas nods and sets out that way.

At the end of the hall, there’s a kitchen. It’s got a nice amount of counter space, but the effect is more or less ruined by the inch-thick layer of dust and the vague smell of food left out to rot.

Carefully, quietly, Dean moves through the space, dagger clutched securely at his side.

Then he hears it.

A muffled groan followed by a thump, like something heavy hitting the floor upstairs.

Cas.

Dean immediately abandons his slow shuffle down the deserted hallway and heads back to the front entrance. Taking deep breaths to keep his pulse under control, he sneaks up the stairs, taking care to keep his dagger in front of him at all times.

At the top of the stairs, Dean immediately flattens himself against the wall. When his back hits the frame of the first doorway, he pivots to face the opening. The first thing he notices is a pentagram on the floor. There’s a goat-headed creature drawn in the center. A caduceus, surrounded by a circle, adorns each of the five corners.

Dean tears his eyes away and keeps inching down the hall. His heart is in his throat, and he tries to remind himself that the jinn is unlikely to try to kill Cas when he could keep him around and feed off him.

Dean’s heart stops for a good three seconds when he gets to the second door on the left and sees Cas’s body, slumped on the floor.

It’s a trap. Dean knows it’s a trap. But it’s also Cas.

Slowly, warily, Dean inches into the room. As soon as he steps inside, he pivots and scans the dark corners. There’s an IV set up in one corner, but no other victims in sight. And no sign of the jinn.

Cautiously, Dean bends down to check on Cas. He’s definitely unconscious, and there’s a bruise on his neck where the jinn must have touched him.

Almost too late, Dean notices movement out of the corner of his eye. He spins around right as Brandon’s hand reaches for his neck, eyes glowing, blue tattoos curling up his forearms.

Dean knows he can’t let Brandon touch him, but lets him get as close as he dares before sweeping out a leg, toppling Brandon onto his back.

Brandon smirks at him. “Shame. If I’m honest, I would’ve liked you to get me in that position under different circumstances.”

Dean pins Brandon with a thigh across his legs and a hand on his arm, raising the dagger. “Sorry, buddy. Not gonna happen.”

Brandon scoffs. “What, because you don’t swing that way, Mr. Macho Hunter?”

Dean grins. “Trust me, that’s not the issue here.”

He plunges the dagger straight into Brandon’s heart and feels the body go still underneath him.

As soon as he’s sure Brandon’s gone, Dean scoots back over to Cas, framing Cas’s face with his hands and running a thumb along each sharp cheekbone. “Hey. Hey, Cas, buddy. Hey. Come on. Wake up.”

A few seconds later, Cas’s eyelashes start to flutter, and Dean breathes a sigh of relief. The jinn must not have had time to administer more than a low dose of poison.

When Cas’s eyes open and fix on Dean, Dean notices he’s still holding Cas’s face. Slowly, carefully, he slides his hands off, sitting back on his knees and making tight fists at his sides.

Cas still hasn’t said anything, but he looks stricken.

“Cas, you okay?” Dean asks, and it comes out as a croak.

“I… I think so,” Cas says slowly, but he’s still looking at Dean like the entire world is shifting around him.

“You know it wasn’t real, right?” Dean forces himself to say. “Whatever he showed you, he was just trying to scare you.”

Cas blinks, and something in his expression shifts. If Dean had to put a name to it, he’d say Cas looks determined. “He’s not…” Cas sits up and his eyes slide to the side, where Brandon’s body is sprawled on the dusty hardwood floor. “He wasn’t… the kind that feeds on fear.”

Dean’s throat suddenly feels dry. “The… the other kind?”

“The other kind,” Cas agrees.

Suddenly, Cas leans forward. Before Dean can move, there’s a cool hand on the side of his neck, and dry, full lips are moving against his.

The touch of those lips is tentative, questioning. But it’s the kind of question Dean knows how to answer.

He tilts his head, pushing his lips back against Cas’s and bringing up one of his hands to touch the soft hair at the nape of Cas’s neck.

Dean’s knees are killing him and there’s a dead body next to him, but he couldn’t care less. He runs the tip of his tongue along Cas’s lower lips and Cas’s mouth opens to him.

He tastes of cheap coffee and blood and lightning and Dean doesn’t think he’s ever tasted anything better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Bourbon Boutique in Campbellsville is a real place, as is the Super 8. I’ve used real street names, although I have no idea whether they have any Victorians around town. I hope any Campbellsville residents reading this will forgive me for taking liberties.


	5. Unhuman Nature

On the drive back to the motel, Dean is aware of every inch of space between him and Cas. More distantly, he’s also aware that this is the sort of thing people are supposed to talk about. When you kiss your best friend, the next step is talking about what the hell just happened.

And yet, there isn’t any talking. Not in the car, not on the walk back to the room, not even when Dean — rather more self-consciously than usual — locks the door behind them.

When he turns around, it’s to find Cas standing about six feet away, looking undecided.

Dean opens his mouth, honestly not sure what he’s planning to say.

Turns out it’s, “Um, bathroom.”

Gripping a pair of pajama pants and his overnight bag like a lifeline, Dean abandons ship, only to realize when the bathroom door closes behind him that he’s just created a new dilemma for himself.

If Cas gets into bed now, what’s Dean supposed to do next? Join him? Get into his own bed and pretend it’s just a night like any other?

Dean frowns at himself in the mirror, trying to decide whether he’s looking any different. Not particularly, although his lips are a little more pink than usual where Cas’s stubble rubbed against them. Dean touches the spot, trying to wrap his mind around everything.

He’s fantasized about kissing Cas plenty of times over the past decade. For some reason, tonight, it actually happened. That’s a good thing, right?

Dean almost leaves the bathroom then to ask for a repeat, until he remembers he came in to wash up, brush his teeth and change into his pajama pants.

That over and done with, Dean’s a little disappointed to find that Cas has in fact gone to bed and turned out the lights, with the exception of the small bedside lamp on Dean’s side of the room.

Dean stashes his overnight bag and sits down on the side of his bed that faces Cas. Cas’s eyes are closed, but his breaths are suspiciously shallow. Dean switches off his lamp to see if it’ll help him grow enough of a spine to actually have this conversation.

It does, a little, so Dean says: “Hey Cas?”

There’s no response for a few seconds, then a noncommittal grunt. That grunt is Dean’s out, and he knows it.

He doesn’t take it.

“Cas, why tonight?”

After a couple of beats, Cas says: “What do you mean?”

With a sigh, Dean lies back on his bed, deciding this conversation is best addressed to the ceiling.

“I mean, why’d you…” Dean takes a deep breath, hoping the additional oxygen to his brain will help with the talking thing. “Why’d you kiss me tonight? Did it… have something to do with what the jinn showed you?”

He isn’t sure Cas is going to respond. The silence stretches. Then: “I’m not ready to talk about that.”

“Oh.” Dean can’t help but feel a little hurt. Dean “no chick-flick moments” Winchester trying to initiate a feelings talk for once, only to get shut down? Doesn’t seem fair somehow.

“I don’t mean…” Cas starts to say, and Dean can hear the bedsprings creaking as Cas sits up, his silhouette vaguely outlined by moonlight coming in through the window. “I don’t mean I don’t want to talk about the… the kiss. But I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. The nature of jinn dreams is… very personal.”

“I don’t know, Cas. What we were doing earlier seemed pretty damn personal to me.”

“It was.” Cas lets out a frustrated huff. “I’m not explaining myself well.”

“You’re really not,” Dean says, gruffly. He feels bad immediately though, and so he adds: “Look, I’m no good at this” — he gestures vaguely between them, even though he knows Cas most likely can’t see him — “either. The talking thing. The… the feelings thing.”

And there it is. The big f word.

Dean looks over at Cas. He can’t make out much of his face, but he can see that Cas is looking back at him.

“As we’re both bad at this, maybe we can start small.”

Dean smiles. “What did you have in mind?”

He can hear the answering smile in Cas’s voice when he says, “Would you let me do it again?”

Dean doesn’t even have to think about that one. “Yeah, I would.”

To his surprise, Cas gets off the bed and Dean feels his mattress dip as Cas sits down. “Oh. You mean… now?”

Cas reaches out a tentative hand and rests it on top of Dean’s thigh. “Is that alright?”

Dean nods and pulls Cas back onto the mattress next to him, their lips meeting for the second time that night.

Their mouths slide against each other, unhurried, content, until Dean’s entire world has narrowed to take in nothing but the feeling of Cas’s solid, warm body next to him.

At some point, they must get under the covers, because that’s how Dean wakes in the morning: tucked into bed, Cas’s head nestled in the crook of his arm.

***

“I’m telling you, Sammy, it was the exact same. The pentagram, the goat head, the snakey symbol.”

“Huh. Two hunts in a row? Doesn’t exactly look like a coincidence anymore.”

Dean and Cas are sitting on opposite sides of the motel room’s table, Sam on speakerphone between them, and Dean doing his level best to focus on the conversation rather than on the way Cas’s leg keeps brushing against his.

“Yes, that’s what we were thinking too,” Cas says. “Something big is clearly happening. Monsters haven’t been known to coordinate efforts on anything like this since Dean killed Eve.”

Dean looks up at that. “So what, we think Monster Mom is back?”

“She could be,” Sam’s tinny voice says thoughtfully from the speaker of Dean’s cell. “I mean, she was raised from Purgatory once. It could happen again.”

Cas shakes his head, frowning skeptically. “But where is the connection to Baphomet? We still don’t even have evidence that Baphomet is a real entity. These monsters seem to know something we don’t.”

Dean hums thoughtfully. “Guess next hunt we should consider keeping something alive for questioning.”

“Probably a good call,” Sam says. “I’ll keep a lookout around the web for any sightings of androgynous goat people.”

Dean snorts and is pleased to see even Cas is cracking a bit of a smile. “Our lives are weird, man.”

Sam chuckles. “Weird doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

Dean chooses that moment to hang up the phone, which earns him a lifted eyebrow from Cas. “I believe the appropriate social protocol is to say your goodbyes before hanging up the phone, Dean.”

Dean grins and gives Cas’s leg a nudge with his foot. “Look who’s talking. You might remember that when we first met, half our conversations used to end with you flying off somewhere before I was done yelling at you.”

Cas fidgets uncomfortably at that. “I’m sorry, Dean. Dealing with the intensity of human emotions generally, and yours specifically… it was hard. I wasn’t used to it.” He looks up, meeting Dean’s eyes and holding them. “It’s still hard.”

Dean swallows as he remembers waking up next to Cas that morning. Exchanging sleepy smiles and good mornings. Cas brushing a casual finger along Dean’s cheek. The air between them tingling with so many things still left unsaid. Cas looking so sleepy and disheveled and so very human.

As though he’s reading Dean’s mind, Cas says, “But it is getting easier. Because as my powers fade, I believe I’m becoming more… human.”

Dean knows this is a sore subject, so he keeps meeting Cas’s eyes and nods, encouraging him to continue. Cas returns the nod gratefully.

“You asked me why I kissed you last night. It… it did have to do with the jinn dream, but it was also about that. Being more human. Being more comfortable with human emotion.” He smiles wistfully, hands perched in mid-air for impending finger quotes. “I think you could say I’ve been ‘working my way up to it.’”

Dean’s feet are walking away from his chair before his brain has a chance to catch up. A second later, he’s squatting in front of Cas, one hand on Cas’s thigh and the other on his cheek, drawing him closer. “You’re already better at this humanity thing than I am,” he says, lips so close to Cas’s they’re practically brushing against each other. “Don’t think I ever would’ve had the guts to make the first move.”

Their third kiss is just as good as the first and second, and then it keeps going. Cas pushes forward against Dean’s lips, insistent and demanding. Dean pushes back, a tingling heat settling into his abdomen and pulsing steadily downward. He pulls back for a moment, feeling Cas’s breath, fast and shallow, against his lips.

The phone chooses that moment to ring.

With a world-weary sigh, Dean disentangles himself from Cas and pushes the speaker button.

Sam’s tinny voice has a definite note of triumph in it. “You guys might wanna get on the road to Maryland.”

***

It turns out a lot of places have legends about goat-like creatures. Dean learns this on the drive across Kentucky and into West Virginia, where he and Cas are planning to make a pit stop in a small town called Davis to investigate a possible wraith.

Cas has a laptop propped open in the passenger seat, doing research while carrying on a seemingly endless text conversation with Sam.

“Sam says the Maryland goatman legend is of fairly unclear origin. Some claim the monster used to be a scientist at a government laboratory in a town called Beltsville who became transformed after an experiment gone wrong,” Cas is saying, a disapproving frown audible in his voice.

Dean snorts. “Sounds like someone read too many comic books.”

“I agree that part of the legend is likely apocryphal. But there is evidence of goatman sightings in an area of Maryland called Prince George’s County going back to colonial times.”

“So what’s making Sammy think this is in any way related to Baphomet? Sometimes a goat is just a goat, man.”

He glances over at Cas and is pleased to see that his lips are twitching at the edges. Trying to get a smile out of Cas is one of Dean’s favorite things to do.

Cas catches Dean looking and looks back, losing the battle against the shy little grin now stretching its way across his face. “No one had reported a sighting of the goatman in more than 10 years. Now we have four eye-witness accounts in the span of a week.”

“Huh. Alright, worth checking out I guess.”

Silence settles as Cas types out another text to Sam, and Dean lets himself have a moment to enjoy the landscape they’re driving through. Baby is climbing a winding road to the top of a ridge, and the view of the valley below is breathtaking. It’s May, and the valley is in bloom, but the trees nearer the top of the ridge are only just beginning to green.

The idyllic atmosphere is somewhat spoiled when Baby reaches the top of the ridge and the highway winds past a coal-mining operation that’s carved deep ridges into the countryside, leaving grey soil and dead trees in its wake.

“Damn shame,” Dean mutters, more to himself than to Cas, but Cas seems to hear him anyway.

“I agree. Despite his faults, Chuck created some very beautiful things. It’s painful to see that beauty spoiled.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean says, turning his eyes back to the road and trying to ignore the deadened landscape to his left. “That’s humans for you. Give us a beautiful thing and we break it.”

Dean’s eyes meet Cas’s across the bench seat. He really hopes Cas understands that they’re not just talking about landscapes anymore.

There’s warmth in Cas’s eyes when he says, “Sometimes things appear broken on the outside, but there is still tremendous beauty if you look closely enough.”

He tilts his head at the passenger-side window. Where a moment ago the landscape seemed all but dead, the road is now lined with trees bursting with deep purple blooms.

Dean smiles at them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The impressions from the drive to Davis, WV are based on my own memories of the landscape. It really is stunning, with a side of depressing when you hit the coal mine. If anyone reading this has loved ones who rely on coal mining for their livelihood, I’m not trying to judge. I just wish the people of WV had more and better options available to them.


	6. When the Levee Breaks

When Dean steps out of the car in the parking lot of the Mountaineer Motel in Davis, the first thing he notices is the crisp mountain air. He takes a deep breath, filling his lungs with it and feeling the tension of a long drive bleed out of his limbs.

He closes the driver’s side door and leans against it, taking in the looming mountain ridge facing him across the road. Its upper reaches are lost in a swirl of clouds and fog.

Dean’s barely surprised when he feels Cas settling against the car next to him, grasping Dean’s hand and running a thumb over his knuckles. Dean tears his eyes off the ridge for a moment, scanning the parking lot, but there is no one around to see. He leans over and drops a kiss to the side of Cas’s head.

They stand quietly for another minute, then head into the motel’s front office. The double room they’re given is plain but clean.

Dean studies the small microwave and mini-fridge with approval. “Appliances are good. We can pick up some ramen cups or instant oatmeal if we want to stretch our food budget.”

Cas frowns disapprovingly as he drops his laptop on the desk in the far corner of the room. “That doesn’t sound very healthy.”

Dean grins and flops onto the bed nearest the front door, leaning into the resulting bounce, and maybe bouncing a few more times, just for the hell of it. “Look at you. You’ve been eating like a real boy for a couple of weeks, and you’re already picky.”

Cas shrugs unconcernedly. “It’s my understanding that pickiness is an essential stage in the development of human taste buds.”

Dean rolls his eyes at the ceiling. “That’s for toddlers, Cas. You’re not a toddler.”

Cas flops down next to Dean, drawing a complaining creak from the bedsprings, which had clearly only just recovered from Dean’s assault. “For all intents and purposes, it’s the same. I’m developing an appreciation for new things, but also preserving a healthy caution in the face of the unfamiliar.”

Dean gives Cas a grin that’s trying to be lewd but only succeeds halfway, having been derailed by insecurity somewhere along the line. “We still talking about food?”

“Yes,” says Cas, cutting to the chase as per usual. “But also about sex.”

Dean’s resulting coughing fit takes only a minute to subside, but at the end of it, he’s still faced with the fact that Cas, _Cas_ is lying on a bed next to him and talking about sex.

While Dean’s wheezing slowly makes the transition back to actual breathing, the frown lines on Cas’s forehead deepen into concern. Finally, he says, “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, Dean. I just… I realize you enjoy sex, but I don’t know whether you enjoy sex with men. I don’t know whether I do.”

Dean sits up, kicks off his boots and scoots down the bed until his back hits the wall. He motions for Cas to do the same. When Cas gets there, Dean grabs his hand and links Cas’s fingers with his on top of the bedspread.

“I’m not expecting you to do anything that makes you uncomfortable, Cas,” Dean says.

He’s finding it easier to have this conversation with Cas’s hand than with his face, so he keeps his eyes down when he adds, “I’ve got some experience with men, but not a lot. This is pretty new territory for me too. So however slow you want to take things, that’s good with me. But when, if, we do… you know, do more stuff. It’ll be great. Not because you’re a guy or whatever, but because you’re you.”

Dean finally looks up and finds Cas’s face inches from his own. “Thank you, Dean,” he rumbles, a soft puff of breath touching Dean’s lips as they open in anticipation.

In spite of everything he’s just said, a spike of heat shoots through Dean’s gut when he feels Cas’s tongue slowly push into his mouth. He gives back as good as he gets, gently pinching Cas’s bottom lip between his teeth, drawing a small gasp.

Cas sits up, dragging Dean away from the wall and into a horizontal position, straddling Dean’s middle and bending down for another kiss. As he does, Dean feels the pressure of Cas’s weight against his groin, where he’s quickly filling out in his jeans. He can’t help the small moan in response to the friction and Cas, looking interested, sits up. His eyes wander down Dean’s front, to where Dean’s dick is now perking up against his zipper.

Cas looks down at himself and Dean follows his gaze to where an unmistakable bulge is tenting Cas’s suit pants. Dean’s eyes travel back up to find a definite deer-in-the-headlights look on Cas’s face.

Arousal instantly cooling, Dean reaches out to take Cas’s hand and pulls him down until he’s nestled against Dean’s chest.

“Hey, buddy. You’re OK,” Dean whispers into the top of Cas’s head, stroking gentle fingers through the nest of dark hair there. “It’s still early. Let’s take a minute to chill, and then we can go work the case.”

Cas doesn’t say anything, but he gives a barely perceptible nod, his arm tightening around Dean’s chest.

***

Four bodies have been found over the past two weeks in Blackwater Falls State Park, right on the outskirts of Davis. While two of the victims have already been buried, a quick visit to the local morgue confirms that the two remaining bodies show few signs of injury, apart from abnormally shrunken and desiccated brain tissue.

Definitely a wraith then, Dean thinks.

“Probably drugs, Agent Page,” says Dr. Harris with a resigned shrug. The harried-looking medical examiner adjusts his glasses and runs a distracted hand across the top of his head, where a small handful of greying hair is slowly losing the fight against male-pattern baldness. “That’s pretty much all we get here these days, is drug overdoses. I’ve been an ME in Tucker County for 20 years, and I’ve seen more overdose cases in the past couple of years than I did in the decade before that.”

Dean’s about to point out that the bodies don’t have the bluish skin tint and constricted pupils that typically go along with an overdose, but Cas cuts him off.

“I imagine the opioid crisis has hit this area hard,” he says, the expression of sympathy on his face completely genuine.

“You’re right about that, Agent Bonham,” says Dr. Harris, the ghost of something infinitely exhausted flitting across his face. “There’s more families around here that’ve lost someone than not.”

Cas nods and reaches out a hand to give the ME’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Dr. Harris looks up, surprised, then gives Cas a grateful nod.

Trying to get the conversation back onto less emotional ground, Dean says, “Dr. Harris, d’you mind if we make copies of some of your files? Locations of the bodies, notes on injuries?”

The ME looks up at Dean, expression steadier than a moment ago. “Of course, agents. Whatever you need.”

Dean and Cas leave the county morgue a few minutes later, a thick stack of copies in hand. Halfway back to the car, Dean stops Cas to say, “You did good in there. Said exactly what he needed to hear.”

The smile he gets in response carries Dean all the way through the rest of the afternoon. Which is saying something, because the plan for the afternoon is to interview grieving relatives.

He and Cas decided to split up and tackle two families each. The first house Dean tries is a run-down ranch-style home, yard crowded with sun-faded, broken toys and cheap plastic furniture. Despite repeated knocks, no one opens the door, and Dean eventually heads to the second address on his list.

It’s a much more pleasant-looking house, with recently painted shutters and a meticulously manicured front lawn. As he waits for a response to his knock, Dean casts an approving glance at the craftsmanship of the wooden porch swing swaying in the cool breeze.

A slender woman in her 50s opens the door a moment later, her jeans and flannel shirt immaculately clean and her dark brown hair framing her face in the kind of flattering way that takes monthly salon visits to maintain.

She smiles at Dean, but there’s something hollow about it. Deep shadows and tense lines along her eyes speak of too little sleep and too much caffeine.

“Mrs. Diana Warren?” Dean returns her smile with interest, making it bright but stopping short of flirtatious. This is a house of mourning, after all. “My name is Agent Page, FBI.” He flashes his badge in a motion so practiced it’s become automatic. “I’m so sorry to bother you at a time like this, but I have a few questions about your son.”

Mrs. Warren’s smile fades and her entire body seems to collapse in upon itself. “Is it really necessary, agent? I’ve already answered so many questions.”

“I really am sorry, ma’am,” Dean says, putting all the sincerity he can muster into the statement. “I wouldn’t have bothered you if I didn’t think this might help us find out what killed Ryan.”

At the sound of her son’s name, Mrs. Warren draws herself up straighter. She doesn’t smile again, but steps aside and motions for Dean to come in. “None of this ma’am business, agent. Diana’s just fine.”

Dean nods in acknowledgement and steps into a tidy front hall. There’s a comfortable gingham armchair in a corner, next to an old-fashioned, freestanding coat rack. Collages of family pictures line the walls; some were clearly taken decades ago.

Diana leads him all the way down the hall, which dead-ends in a cozy living room. Dean sinks into a generously padded love seat next to the fireplace, barely suppressing a contented groan as the various aches and pains in his legs and back thank him for sitting down.

“Anything I can offer you, agent?” Diana asks, hovering nearby.

“I’m good, thanks,” Dean says, letting his eyes roam over the tasteful art prints along the wall. On the right-hand corner of the fireplace mantle is a picture of a boy in his early 20s, wearing a graduation gown and holding a diploma folder. An elated smile stretches his lips and crinkles his eyes. A black ribbon is stretched across one corner of the picture frame.

Dean cocks a head at the picture and looks questioningly at Diana, who has settled in an armchair nearby. “Ryan?”

Diana nods, giving the image a wistful smile. “His college graduation.” On the exhale of a heavy breath, she adds, “He was already into drugs at that point, but we didn’t know it at the time. Then, when we found out, we figured he’d get better, being away from a college campus.”

“But he didn’t… get better?” Dean prompts. He feels vaguely uncomfortable in his own skin. Interviewing grieving families has always been Sam’s specialty. Absently, Dean wonders how Cas is doing with his interviews.

“No, he did,” Diana says slowly, as if piecing the memories together. “He was clean for a while there. Went to NA meetings in Keyser every week.”

“NA?”

“Narcotics Anonymous. He made some friends there. I really thought we’d turned the corner.”

Dean looks over at the picture again. The kid reminds him vaguely of Sam, and Dean suddenly remembers that his kid brother never got to have a graduation ceremony at Stanford. Just another regret in a lifetime of them.

“The medical examiner thinks Ryan died of a drug overdose,” Dean says. “It sounds like you agree with him.”

“I don’t know what else there is,” Diana says, her voice breaking a little towards the end. “Do you?”

***

Dean and Cas reconvene at the motel room over takeout from a busy little place called Hellbender Burritos.

It doesn’t take them long to spot the common thread in their interviews.

“So all the victims were recovering addicts who attended meetings in Keyser,” Cas muses, taking a thoughtful bite of his tortilla wrap and scattering the table with globs of guacamole and grated cheddar.

With a world-weary sigh, Dean tosses Cas a napkin and consolidates the heap of local maps and crime-scene photos on his side of the table. “Sounds like. NA is definitely our best lead, but I don’t feel right trying to get into their meetings under false pretenses.”

Which is the truth, but what Dean doesn’t say is that he’s not sure he wants to listen to other people’s stories of addiction and what it’s done to their families. He thinks of John, coming back from a tough hunt, screaming at him and Sam, whiskey on his breath. He thinks of Sam, eyes darkened with demon blood, punching Dean to the ground and walking away from him rather than leave his enabler.

Dean takes a bite of his burrito, and a long trail of salsa dribbles down his hand onto one of the maps. With entirely more dramatic flourish than necessary, Cas slides a napkin off the stack and hands it to Dean. But when he speaks, his voice is kind. “We’ll find another way, Dean. Perhaps we can talk to the counselor who leads the meetings. We could ask about any new faces he’s noticed.”

Dean nods, grateful for the distraction from the mess of memories crowding in on him. “Yeah, sounds good. Anyway, makes sense that a wraith would be targeting addicts. Sam and I hunted one once that was feeding off the inmates of a mental hospital. They’re fragile, and people don’t trust them when they say something’s wrong, or someone’s acting weird. Same deal with addicts.”

Cas chews thoughtfully. “I imagine it also has to do with dopamine. Wraiths consider it a delicacy, and addicts’ brains would be soaked with it.”

Appetite suddenly lost, Dean packs up his dinner and walks it to the mini-fridge for safekeeping. “Well, once we’ve got a suspect, all we need to do is get them to stand in front of a mirror. Wraiths show their true forms in their reflection.”

Cas frowns. “How do we do that?”

“Beats me,” Dean says, the second word almost swallowed by a jaw-cracking yawn. “That’s future Dean’s problem.”

That night, there is no discussion about bed assignments. When Dean emerges from the bathroom, Cas has already burrowed under the sheets of the bed nearest the exit. Warmth spreading in his chest, Dean slides in next to Cas, pressing a kiss to the back of his neck.

***

That night, Dean dreams.

He dreams of Sam’s face, eyes wide and pleading. His voice, screaming muffled curses through a reinforced steel door. Curses turning into screams of agony until Dean can no longer tell where Sam’s screams end and his own begin.

He wakes bathed in cold sweat, a warm weight on his chest the only real thing in the disorienting gloom.

The warm weight turns out to be Cas’s hand. Cas is bent over him, a mere silhouette in the darkness. “Dean? Are you alright?”

Dean closes his eyes to breathe, letting the soft rumble of Cas’s voice ground him.

“Cas,” he whispers.

“I’m here.” The voice sounds close, mere inches from Dean’s ear.

It’s suddenly easy then. Dean brings up his hand to cup Cas’s face where it rests on the pillow next to his, pulling him into a deep, hungry kiss.

Dean’s last few nagging doubts are silenced when Cas’s arms fold around his back, pulling their bodies flush together.

Apparently having learned his lesson from earlier in the day, Cas moves his hips against Dean’s, searching for friction. Dean gasps at the sensation, cock hardening and head swimming with arousal.

Dean vaguely tries to remember the last time he’s had sex, but his brain decides to abandon conscious thought right around the time Cas moves again and stifles a surprised moan against Dean’s shoulder.

“Shh, you’re OK,” Dean whispers, tugging at the hem of Cas’s undershirt. “Can I?”

Cas nods, still moving frantically against Dean. Dean chuckles, even as heat builds in his veins. “You’ll have to stop for just a sec, buddy. Promise, we’ll keep going if you want.”

With a frustrated huff, Cas sits up, using the motion to grind against Dean one more time; slowly, with intent.

“Holy shit, Cas,” Dean breathes, sitting up and pulling Cas’s shirt over his head with a jerk.

It lands on the floor next to the bed, shortly followed by Dean’s faded band shirt.

They’re both kneeling now, facing each other, hands roaming over bare chests. Dean can feel Cas’s uneven breaths on his cheek as he whispers, “Please, Dean… can I see you?”

Dean nods jerkily, pulling down his boxers and shuffling awkwardly until he can slide them all the way off. Suddenly self-conscious, he covers his hard length with one hand, stroking gently.

“Your turn,” he says, feeling himself blush. “I mean, if you…”

Cas nods and slides his own boxers down his legs, kneeling back in front of Dean as soon as it’s done. Dean looks down at him and swallows. “God, Cas. You… you look good.”

Dean hasn’t been a virgin since he was 15, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling suddenly nervous. This isn’t some drunken back-alley hand job. This is another man, naked and in bed with him. And not just any man. Cas.

All nervousness goes out the window when he feels Cas’s fingers tentatively skim over the head of his cock. “Dean… Dean, may I?”

“Yeah,” Dean says, shuffling closer, still on his knees opposite Cas. “Come here. I’ve got an idea.”

Dean lines up his erection next to Cas’s own, gasping at the touch of soft skin on skin. He gathers a few drops of precome off his tip, then takes hold of Cas’s fingers, wrapping them over his own and guiding them up and down their lengths slowly, then faster.

Cas leans into him, chest rising and falling with quick, shallow breaths. Dean trails soft kisses along Cas’s shoulder as their hands move up and down together, the sound of flesh on flesh mixing with quiet gasps and barely stifled moans.

Cas’s breath hitches. “Dean, I… I think…”

Dean wraps his free arm around Cas’s shoulders, pulling them forward against his own, breathing in the fresh, electric scent of Cas’s neck. “It’s OK. Come for me. Please. Want you to.”

Cas cries out, spurting all over their hands. The warm wetness, added to the all-over sensation of skin gliding against skin, is enough to send Dean over the edge.

“Cas,” he pants. “God, Cas.”

They fall back onto the sheets, limbs tangled, sweat and come mingling between them.

Dean knows he should get up and find something to clean them up, but his body doesn’t seem to want to move.

That’s future Dean’s problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TA-DAAAA! 
> 
> I just needed to include a mention of Hellbender Burritos in here. It’s a weirdly appropriate place for Dean and Cas to get dinner, even if it’s named after a species of salamander rather than, you know, hell. Also, their burritos are amazing and they deserve a shout-out. Also also, the length of this chapter was getting out of control, so I decided to split it and finish up the hunt in the next one. See ya there.


	7. Patience

A quick call to the NA office in Keyser the next morning confirms that the group counselor, Matty, will be in for most of that day. The drive from Davis is slightly less than an hour, made a lot more pleasant by a couple of coffees and pastries from a roadside café.

The office turns out to be located in a non-descript, square brick annex next to a church. Walking through the front door, Dean and Cas are greeted by a woman in her late ‘60s, curly grey hair tamed with bobby pins and a warm, competent smile on her face.

“Morning all and welcome to NA. My name’s Angie. What can I do for you?” she says as she neatens the stack of papers cluttering her small desk opposite the entrance.

Putting on his clipped, professional voice, Dean raises his badge. He notes with a quick sideways glance that Cas has pulled his badge out as well and, for once, it’s not upside down. “Agents Page and Bonham, FBI. We’re here to see Matthew Henderson.”

Angie’s smile fades, replaced by a disapproving frown. “Everything our members tell the counselor is in strict confidence, agents. Matty wouldn’t be able to talk about any of that with you.”

“We’re not here on a narcotics case,” Cas says, a gentle and reassuring smile on his face. “We’re investigating the recent deaths of several people who came here for counseling, and we simply want to learn any information about the victims that Mr. Henderson feels comfortable sharing with us.”

“Every little bit helps,” Dean adds, adjusting his professional mask to match Cas’s warmer approach.

Angie gives them an approving nod. “Alright.” She turns to a door at the back of the room, then pivots once more to face them. “It’s hard, you know? We’re used to losing people of course, but so many in such a short time… and at least two of them seemed like they were really working themselves out of the hole.” Angie adds, more quietly, “To the extent that you ever can.”

Dean somehow gets the sense that she’s speaking from personal experience.

Angie does turn back to the door then and raps a quiet knuckle against it. “Matty? A couple of FBI agents here to see you.”

A voice sounds through the flimsy wood, tone just a bit apprehensive. “Did you tell them that…”

“Sure did,” Angie interrupts. “They’re just here to ask a couple of questions about the deaths.”

With a sigh audible even across the room, Matty says, “Sure, let ‘em on in.”

Matty’s office is small and cramped, coffee mugs and printouts littering every available surface. A small window opening near the ceiling provides very little natural light, and the fluorescent tube lighting casts a sickly glow over the cracked, yellowing paint coating each wall.

A framed piece of embroidery on the left-hand wall encourages visitors to “Let God Take the Wheel,” words framed by a sloppily stitched flower garland.

Matty is in his mid-40s. Too-long, disheveled salt-and-pepper hair frames a slim face that has too much obvious mileage on it to be handsome anymore. “Welcome to NA, agents,” he says, expression wary but friendly. “Can I have Angie get you anything?”

“No, thank you,” Cas says politely. “We had coffee on the way here.”

Matty smiles at him and motions for Dean and Cas to sit in the two flimsily padded, meeting-room-style chairs lined up in front of his desk. “Takes me about three cups to just get out the house in the morning.”

“Same,” Cas says as he sits down, and Dean is once again struck by how much better Cas has gotten lately at bonding with people. A voice pipes up in the back of Dean’s head to tell him that a Cas who is independent and comfortable with humanity might want to go off and do his own thing. Without Dean.

Shaking himself, Dean says, more abruptly than he’d intended, “So the deaths. I’m assuming you knew all four of the victims?”

Looking a bit taken aback at the abrupt change of subject, Matty nonetheless answers without hesitation. “Yeah. Ryan, Deb, Anna and Steve. Deb would miss a meeting sometimes, but not any of the others. Anna was actually a sponsor, and Ryan was about ready to become one too.”

Dean frowns. “Was there anything unusual about these four? Anything that would link them to each other?”

“Not really,” Matty shrugs, taking a sip from a plain white mug that says “Angels Are Watching Over You” in plain black lettering topped by a little golden halo. “Ryan and Steve were good friends, but Anna and Deb tended to hang with a different crowd.”

“How about their behavior? Anything off about it before they disappeared?”

Matty looks thoughtful for a moment, then taps a forefinger against the mug he’s still cradling in his hands. “You know, there _was_ something.”

Cas looks like he’s about to prompt Matty, but Dean quiets him with a small touch to his arm under the table.

After a moment, Matty says, “Angie will sometimes invite our members over to her house to play cards. Those four were all regulars.”

Matty looks up from where he’d been contemplating his mug, expression a little guilty. “Not that I’m saying Angie had anything to do with what happened. I mean, they all died of overdoses, right?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Dean says, professional coolness back in his tone. “Is there anything else you can remember that might help us, Mr. Henderson?”

“Don’t think so,” says Matty, shaking his head.

“If anything does come to mind, give us a call,” says Cas, sliding his FBI business card — a Kinko’s original — across the table.

“I sure will, agent,” says Matty, smiling pleasantly as they all rise to shake hands. “Take care now.”

As Dean and Cas walk out the office door, Dean casts around for some way, any way to catch a glimpse of Matty’s reflection. He knows Cas has a mirrored compact in his coat pocket for just that purpose, but Matty never moved from behind his desk while they were talking, and there aren’t any reflective surfaces anywhere in his office.

Dean lets Cas walk ahead of him, moving to shield him from Matty’s view as Cas unobtrusively reaches into his coat pocket, dropping the compact in the general vicinity of Angie’s desk. Cas stops and bends down to pick it up, flipping it open and angling the mirror so that, presumably, he can see Angie reflected in it.

As Cas straightens up, he aims a small, subtle shake of his head at Dean, then turns around and addresses Angie, who is frowning, probably at the cognitive dissonance of watching a man in a dirty trench coat and muddy shoes cradle a cosmetic accessory in his hand. “Is this yours? I found it on the floor.”

Angie shakes her head, still looking a little confused. “You can put it in the lost and found.” She points to a small plastic box by the glass door. Dean watches Cas walk toward it, knowing he’ll drop the compact and palm it again in the same motion. It’s a trick Dean taught him; honed from years of shoplifting to keep Sam fed.

That’s when Dean sees it.

He’s still standing in the open doorway of Matty’s office, body held sideways because he was about to pull the door shut behind him. There’s nothing, then, between Matty, sitting at his desk, and the glass of the front door that shows his reflection.

Matty is focused on the screen of his desktop computer, not looking at Dean. Even so, Dean can tell that his features aren’t human. Sharp, pointed teeth jut out from behind desiccated lips. Matty’s cheeks are sunken, every part of his face lined and disfigured by grave rot. His hair, which had seemed long and full before, is wispy and sickly-looking. A corpse’s hair.

Working off more than 40 years’ experience of not letting his feelings show on his face, Dean pushes down the rising tide of disgust. With a carefully controlled movement, he pulls the office door shut.

***

Dean guides Baby out of the parking lot opposite the annex and into a small alley down the street; close enough to still see the front door, but far enough that the Impala isn’t in plain view. Half the houses and shops on the block are boarded up, so Dean doesn’t think anyone’s going to care that his car is blocking an alley.

The plan is to wait until Matty leaves work and trail him to wherever it is he’s going. Killing a wraith is simple enough — a silver blade to the heart. Of course, the goal for now is just to restrain him; that’s what the silver cuffs in Dean’s coat pocket are for. After all, they have a goatman to find.

An hour or so later, Dean feels his muscles going stiff and he starts to fidget. Cas frowns at him. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, just… it gets uncomfortable sitting like this. Used to be easier when I was in my 20s,” Dean says, smiling ruefully.

“So lie down,” Cas says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I can keep watch in the meantime.”

Dean hesitates for a minute, then gives the backseat a speculative glance. His eyes circle back around to Cas, who’s giving him a shy smile. Making a spur-of-the-moment decision, Dean kicks off his boots and lies down, head in Cas’s lap. Cas stiffens for just a moment, surprise plain on his face. Then he slumps down, eyes never leaving the annex’s door, but fingers coming up tentatively to card through Dean’s hair.

Dean closes his eyes and relaxes into the touch.

***

He must have dozed off, because when he hears Cas say his name, quietly, urgently, it’s dark outside.

Dean sits up quickly, blinking his way through the resulting head rush just in time to see Matty climb into a crappy old Corolla in the parking lot next to the annex. He slips back into his boots with practiced ease and turns the key in Baby’s ignition.

They trail Matty at a distance of about three car lengths as he makes his way out of town along Route 46. After less than five minutes, the Corolla makes a right onto Cemetery Road.

Dean scoffs. “Figures that a monster would live by the cemetery.”

In actual fact, though, Matty drives past the cemetery, slowing down to make another right onto White Way, then a right again at Turkey Trot Lane. Dean cuts Baby’s headlights and rolls along the small byway as slowly as he dares, watching the Corolla’s taillights disappear into the darkness.

Luckily, the road is lined by nothing but trees on each side. In the distance, Dean watches the Corolla come to a stop as its lights blink out. He kills the engine.

After half a minute, Dean and Cas slide off their seats, opening and closing their doors as quietly as they can. Still, the slight creak in the hinge of the driver’s side door that Dean keeps meaning to oil out sounds like a gun shot in the quiet woods.

They inch forward along the cracked pavement, to where the road dead-ends about a quarter-mile ahead. The only sounds are a few early crickets and a quiet rushing that Dean’s memory quickly identifies as the water from Limestone Run. Before he dozed off, he’d spent some of their long wait in the car studying a map of Keyser, trying to get a read on possible lairs.

Cas reaches the end of the road first. There are two houses, both boarded up, but the left-hand one is showing signs of life. Thin slivers of light are escaping from behind the boards covering the front windows, casting irregular stripes onto the shadowy spaces of the front yard.

The house might have started out in life as a vacation home or a hunter’s log cabin. It’s got that look about it, with its low eaves and deliberately rustic wood finish. It’s seen better days though. The yard is overgrown, weeds creeping up to crack the paving stones of the front walkway. A broken shutter dangles next to one of the windows, holding on as best it can with a single working hinge.

Dean and Cas creep up to the house, flattening their backs against either side of the front door. In the light from the window, Dean silently raises three fingers. Cas nods at him to show he understands. Slowly, Dean folds up his fingers. When the last one’s gone, Cas reaches for the doorknob and twists. The door opens without so much as a creak.

The first thing Dean sees is the doorway to another room just to the left. The door is open. On the floor, there is a pentagram. Cas sees it too, frowns at it.

Suddenly, there is a blur of motion at the edge of Dean’s vision. Before he can react, Cas has twisted to meet their attacker, pinning him to the wall with a solid hand on each wrist to contain the wickedly sharp bone spikes protruding there. Cas’s angel blade has fallen to the floor, and Dean bends to retrieve it.

Matty pins them with a stare of deepest loathing. “Hunters. Should’ve known. FBI doesn’t care about a couple of addicts turned up dead.”

Casual as you please, Dean smiles and strolls over to Matty, producing the silver handcuffs from his pocket. “Bet you thought it was a great cover. Ready-made victim pool of people who were already vulnerable. People nobody would believe when they said they saw something suspicious.”

Matty shrugs, but his eyes zero in on the cuffs, apprehension in every line of his face. “Worked fine for a while. Ryan and Steve I wasn’t actually going to kill; they’d been clean too long. Not enough dopamine in their brains to get my fix. They saw me feed off Deb though, so it was safer to keep them quiet.”

Dean sees Cas’s knuckles whiten around Matty’s wrists just a second too late to stop what’s about to happen. Not that he would have.

Blue eyes blazing with fury, Cas grabs hold of one of the bone spikes and pulls hard. The spike cracks and breaks off, wrenching a raw scream of agony from Matty’s throat.

Cas’s voice is a feral growl when he says, “Steve was 23 years old. He had a pregnant wife. Did you know that?” Dean’s rarely seen him lose control like this in a fight; it’s mesmerizing. For a second, that aura of crackling power is back.

Dean reaches out and rests a steadying hand on Cas’s arm. It won’t do to smite Matty where he stands. They still need him.

Cas takes a deep breath, then nods, watching as Dean grabs hold of Matty’s arms and twists them into the cuffs. The silver sizzles where it touches Matty’s skin.

“Now, Matty,” Dean says, producing his silver blade and sliding it along Matty’s throat. Matty tries to lower his chin, but Dean brings up his other hand to fix it in place. “Let’s have a little chat about Baphomet.”

Matty’s apprehensive and vaguely pained expression gives way to unadulterated confusion. “Who now?”

Slightly thrown, but determined not to show it, Dean presses on. “Baphomet. You know, goat guy. You were trying to summon him. Why?”

Matty turns his eyes on Cas, still looking lost. “What’s he talking about, man?”

Cas frowns, then looks at Dean and nods toward the room at the front of the house. “Show him.”

Dean grabs hold of Matty and, none too gently, manhandles him through the doorframe. The pentagram is still there, red lines gleaming in the moonlight that’s shining through cracks in the window boards.

“What the hell?” Matty says quietly, eyes wide.

More confused than ever, Dean exchanges a look with Cas. He tries one more time. “Nice act, Matty. We know you drew this thing. Why?”

Matty scoffs. “You followed me here, so you know I’ve only been home about five minutes. Never would’ve had time to draw that.”

Cas bends down, running a finger along a line of the pentagram. It smudges. “This is fresh blood, Dean,” he says. “He’s telling the truth. He wouldn’t have had time to do this before we cornered him.”

“Alright,” Dean says, tightening his hold on Matty and very much aware he’s grasping at straws. “Maybe there’s another one of you in here. Two monsters for the price of one.”

Matty squirms in Dean’s grasp just enough to aim a smirk at him. “If there was, you’d be dead by now.”

“Better not take any chances then,” Dean says calmly, pivoting Matty’s body away from his own and raising his silver blade, aiming for the heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone has personal experience with Narcotics Anonymous and I got anything totally wrong, feel free to let me know. I’m working off internet research here, and it isn’t my intent to misrepresent anything. I have some experience with addiction in the family, but have never lost any loved ones to it. Please know that I’m approaching this topic with the utmost respect, and any errors are accidental.


	8. The Trap

Professor Larry Desmond’s office in the fine arts building at the University of Maryland’s College Park campus is surprisingly roomy. To the right of his desk, comfortable armchairs and a well-loved, saggy couch ring a low, circular table.

Desmond’s wavy hair frames a wryly amused face split in half by a walrus mustache. He’s wearing a tan blazer over a checkered shirt and slacks that are fraying at the hems. Even with his limited knowledge of college professors, Dean thinks Desmond couldn’t look more like one if he tried.

Next to Dean, Sam is in his element, engaging the professor in conversation about some journal article on regional myths of the American South that they’ve both read. Dean wishes he had Cas to look at to keep from nodding off, but Cas is across the street at the student union, interviewing one of the eyewitnesses to the recent rash of goatman sightings.

So instead, Dean lets his eyes roam over the bookshelves that line the walls. He stops short when his eyes fall on a book with the professor’s own name on the cover.

“You wrote a book about Robert Johnson?” he blurts out, not even bothering to wait until Sam’s done talking, which earns him a Grade-A bitchface.

“Yes,” Desmond agrees, turning a surprised but friendly smile on Dean. “My areas of study include African-American traditional music and occult mythology. You may know there’s some overlap between those two where Johnson is concerned.”

Dean nods. “Yeah. ‘Hellhound on My Trail’ and all that. He sang about how he’d made a deal for his soul, then died choking on his own blood and muttering about big, evil dogs.”

Desmond doesn’t seem fazed by that comment in the slightest, and Dean’s respect for him immediately goes up a few notches. “Yes, that’s the story. Of course, no official cause of death was ever recorded. Some say he died of congenital syphilis, but a black man found by the side of a road in Mississippi didn’t rate an autopsy back then.”

Desmond glances back over at Sam, who still seems vaguely annoyed. “But that’s not what you two came to talk to me about, is it?”

“No,” Sam agrees, looking relieved the conversation is back on track. “We came to talk to you about the legend of the Maryland goatman.”

“Yeah, Sam and I, we’re collaborating on a research project about local legends,” Dean chimes in, “and it seems like you’re the authority on the subject around here.”

Desmond smiles conspiratorially. “I do seem to get the call whenever the local papers get wind of another goatman sighting.” He leans forward, elbows resting on knees and hands tented, ready to lecture. “The goatman legend goes far back in this area of Maryland; many hundreds of years, in fact. Bored teenagers — students here, more often than not — have kept the legend alive by adding salacious details. You may have heard about the science-experiment-gone-wrong theory.” Dean and Sam nod in tandem. “Nonsense, of course, but the idea inspired a fairly popular haunted attraction down the road. It ran out of money a few years ago, unfortunately.”

“So you don’t think the goatman is real?”

Desmond raises his eyebrows, looking at Dean like he’s just sprouted a pair of horns himself. “Real? No, of course not.”

“Right,” Sam cuts in. “But goatman sightings, whereabouts do they usually happen?”

“Fletchertown Road in Bowie,” Desmond says, without hesitation. “That’s where the legend has been centered for a long time now. It’s a secluded, wooded area; used to be something of a lover’s lane decades ago. People found a mutilated dog there in 1971, said the goatman did it, and we were off to the races.”

“But don’t you think it’s odd that there are suddenly so many sightings, when no one’s reported any in years?” Dean says, trying to claw back some dignity.

“Not exactly,” Desmond shrugs. “These things come and go.”

They keep talking for a few minutes, but Desmond doesn’t have much else of substance to share, other than encouraging Sam and Dean to head to the main library and take a look at its collection of goatman lore.

Dean shoots Cas a quick text to let him know that’s where they’ve gone, getting a thumbs-up emoji in response, followed by “College students are very hard to talk to” and three eye-roll emojis.

Dean grins down at his phone. When he looks back up, Sam is watching him with the kind of teasing grin that always spells trouble. “Anything from Cas?”

“He’s still interviewing…” Sam’s grin explodes into a full-on chuckle. “What?!”

“Had to be Cas. You never smile like that at anybody else’s jokes.”

“Shut up, Sammy,” Dean growls and stalks ahead, past the statue of — is that a turtle? — and straight through the main entrance of the library.

***

The library research and Cas’s interview largely confirm the information they got from Desmond: goatman sightings, including the rash of recent ones, tend to be concentrated along a remote, wooded stretch of Fletchertown Road.

So in the mid-afternoon, Sam, Dean and Cas regroup in the parking lot of a motel where Sam has snagged a room, along a commercial stretch of Route 1 not too far from campus. Sam had beaten them to Maryland by a whole day, not having stopped for a hunt along the way.

“I grabbed a single to save money, but I could move to a double and we could all bunk up together like we usually do,” Sam is saying.

Dean has anticipated this turn of events and is ready with his counter offer. But before he can launch into his cover story about how Cas likes to have space to stretch out even if he doesn’t sleep — laced with a couple of colorful insults about Sam’s snoring — Cas starts talking.

“Actually, I sleep now, and I’ve gotten used to sharing a room with Dean. So if you don’t mind, we’ll get our own.”

Before either Sam or Dean can react, Cas sets out for the front office. Sam raises his eyebrows at Dean, who shrugs helplessly and flees the scene before he can be questioned.

There’s a few more hours until dinner, and Dean is extremely grateful for that fact. He hasn’t so much as touched Cas since they arrived, not daring to make any kind of move with Sam around.

Cas seems to feel similarly frustrated because as soon as Dean’s pulled the door of their room shut behind him, Cas has him pinned against it, kissing along Dean’s jaw and down the line of his throat.

“Eager, are we?” Dean says, his attempt at cockiness undermined by how his breath is already coming faster.

He decides to just lean into it and pulls Cas’s face up to his own, kissing deeply but with definite intent.

Soon enough, Cas employs his signature move, pushing his hips forward to grind against Dean’s crotch. “God, Cas,” Dean grits out. “You’re getting good at that.”

“I agree,” Cas has the nerve to say, grinning against Dean’s cheek. “But there’s something else I want to try.”

Dean gets the idea quickly enough when Cas slides down his front, hands trailing in his wake. Cas sinks to his knees in front of him, fingers fumbling with Dean’s belt buckle.

“Cas, are… are you sure?” Dean makes himself ask, trying to ignore the way his jeans are feeling way too tight around his crotch.

Cas nods, eyes blazing with the kind of determination Dean’s only ever seen in the heat of impending battle.

“Oh thank God,” Dean mutters, giving Cas a hand with his belt and button.

Carefully, reverently, Cas slides down the zipper of Dean’s jeans and, kissing circles onto Dean’s stomach, reaches up to pull his pants and boxers down in a single movement.

Dean sighs with relief at having his erection freed, closing his eyes as he feels Cas mouthing small, wet kisses along his hip and stomach.

For just a moment, Cas stops to take in the view. When he returns to kissing Dean’s naked, tingling skin, trailing upwards along his thighs, Dean feels a smile forming on Cas’s face. Why the hell is he smiling?

“Um, Cas? It’s not really polite to laugh at a guy’s junk when he’s all naked and vulnerable. Or ever, actually.”

Cas looks up at him from below, eyes dark and sparkling. “I’m not laughing.” Cas rests his chin on Dean’s thigh as their gazes meet, bringing up one of his hands and gently trailing it down Dean’s side. “It’s just, I never really saw the appeal of genitalia before. But I think that I do now.”

“Oh,” Dean says. He wishes Cas would look away, because Dean’s definitely blushing now.

But Cas just smiles again and licks a long, slow stripe up the side of Dean’s cock. Dean bites back a moan, and it’s all he can do to stay upright when Cas gets to the top and swirls his tongue along Dean’s slit, gathering up precome with his tongue.

“Cas, are you sure you’ve never…” The rest of that sentence doesn’t make it out of Dean’s mouth, because that’s the moment Cas chooses to wrap his mouth around Dean’s cock and slide it inside himself, all the way to the back of his throat.

Dean’s brain is off somewhere at the other end of the galaxy for all he knows, and he relaxes into the sensation, feeling the heat in his gut flood every part of him, down to his fingertips.

Cas slides his mouth up and down Dean’s shaft, getting faster in response to the small moans and whimpers Dean barely knows he’s making. He wants to watch, but he also wants to keep his eyes closed and focus on nothing but the sensation of warmth and wetness embracing him.

Eventually, Dean does open his eyes and look down, because he just has to know what this looks like. Cas’s eyes meet his and they’re so, so blue and then Cas takes hold of Dean’s balls with one hand and grabs his shaft with the other, working him where his mouth can’t reach, not yet, but maybe with practice… and that’s it. “Cas, I, I’m gonna…”

Cas doesn’t even try to pull back. Instead, he shuffles closer on his knees, swallowing down the spurts of Dean’s come on his tongue and stroking his hands up and down Dean’s legs as he rides out the aftershocks.

When Dean feels his brain come slowly back online, he sinks down, back still to the door, and pulls Cas towards him, kissing him hard, tasting himself. This time it’s Dean who smiles. “Definitely gonna return that favor, Cas.”

Cas pulls back a few inches and looks at Dean with that concerned, frowning head tilt that’s always made Dean a little weak in the knees. “Dean, you don’t have to.”

“Oh yes, I do,” Dean mumbles against Cas’s cheek as his fingers trail circles on the back of Cas’s neck. “I want to.”

He pulls Cas up by the lapels of his coat, and Cas comes willingly. They stumble to one of the beds and Cas lets Dean push him down onto it. Dean follows, straddling Cas’s thighs and working at his belt impatiently.

He’s never done this before. He’s wanted to try, but the idea of swapping blowjobs with some stranger always seemed gross. This though… this is a different story.

Finally, Dean gets the belt and pants undone and slides them down Cas’s legs until they hit the floor. He climbs back onto the bed, positioning himself right above Cas’s full cock where it’s curving up towards his stomach.

Dean’s lungs suddenly feeling too tight, he takes a deep breath as he bends down and gets his first taste, running his tongue over Cas’s balls and mouthing at one experimentally. Cas gasps and fidgets above him. Dean looks up. “This OK?”

Cas nods fervently. “Yes. Very OK.”

Grinning, Dean takes one of Cas’s balls into his mouth and sucks. The resulting groan is worth it, as is the salty, musky taste on Dean’s tongue.

Still, bigger, better things are straining above him, waiting for his attention. Dean runs his fingers up and down Cas’s shaft, stroking and teasing, tongue following in the wake of his touch.

“Oh, Dean,” Cas rasps. “Please.”

Taking mercy, Dean props himself up on his elbows. He grabs the bottom of Cas’s shaft and takes him inside, cockhead straining against the inside of his cheek.

A deep, guttural groan escapes Cas at that, sounding exactly like every single time Dean’s imagined doing this during desperate, quiet jerkoff sessions in the shower.

Dean keeps working his hand, setting up a rhythm with his lips at the same time and swirling his tongue over the tip again and again when he sees how that motion makes Cas’s hips lift off the bed.

Cas’s breathing has gone fast and shallow, coming in little pants that sound like “Dean, Dean, Dean.” Dean knows what that means, but he doesn’t pull off, letting Cas’s voice urge him on as he speeds up and braces himself.

When Cas releases onto his tongue, Dean swallows, relishing the feel of Cas’s muscles tightening, then relaxing around and above him.

Finally, he pulls off to find that Cas has an arm draped over his eyes and is shaking with helpless laughter. It’s a deep, bubbling sound, and Dean tries to remember the last time he’s heard it. Has he ever heard it?

Dean pulls himself up and climbs to the top of the bed, kissing that laugh.

***

Dean still feels like he’s walking on air when they all pile into the Impala after dark, headed for Fletchertown Road.

It turns out to be a heavily wooded stretch of lonely asphalt on the outskirts of a small city called Bowie. Dean parks Baby next to a community park by the side of a lake, and they pause to gear up.

Despite all their research, Sam and Cas still aren’t sure what can kill this thing, so they take a little bit of everything: Rock salt rounds. Flasks of holy water. Silver blades. Handguns loaded with silver bullets.

They’d debated waiting until daylight to head into the woods, but in the end, it had seemed better not to alarm any passing suburbanites with the sight of three men armed to the teeth. They could have stowed the blades and flasks out of sight, of course, but a shotgun is a hard thing to hide even when you’re a fading angel with a taste for flasher coats.

They follow a paved walking trail along the edge of a small lake for half a mile or so, then branch off where the trail hits the edge of the woods.

Outside, light pollution from the surrounding suburbs made it easy to find their way, but in the shelter of the dense trees, Dean’s profoundly grateful for the small flashlight mounted to the barrel of his shotgun.

He keeps his eyes on the ground, but pauses frequently to check on Sam and Cas, who are walking to his left and right, respectively, at a distance of about 20 feet. They’d agreed it was better not to split up entirely while they were hunting something so unfamiliar, but it still made sense to cover as much ground as possible as they walked.

Dean knows he can’t afford to be distracted on a hunt, but he’s having an extremely hard time keeping his mind off thoughts of Cas.

They aren’t always sex flashbacks either, though he definitely enjoys those when they make an appearance. Most often, he finds his thoughts wandering to Cas lying spent on his back, relaxed and laughing. Looking less powerful but somehow more beautiful than ever.

Dean shakes himself, and immediately notices that something is off. He can still hear Sam and Cas walking on either side of him, but their sounds seem muffled, somehow.

He’s just about to call out to them when he sees it. A slight haze in the air in front of him, making the view of the forest ahead shimmer and shift.

Dean considers calling out again, but something about that hazy presence is oddly soothing. This is a good thing. Something intimate and just for him, like Cas’s laugh.

He reaches out to touch, and the world turns upside down.

Dean’s entire being stretches, shifts and rearranges itself, breath squeezing in his lungs and muscles stretching at impossible angles.

When his body feels like his own again, he’s sitting at a small, square table looking out over a stunning view of a river; in the background, the lights of a city blink up at him. His shotgun is gone.

There is someone sitting in the chair opposite his own.

“Hello, Dean,” she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Professor Desmond is based on a real UMD professor who has indeed written about Robert Johnson and is a bit of an expert on the goatman legend. I hope he’ll forgive me for dragging him into this. The haunt he mentions is GoatMan Hollow, still the best haunted-house experience I’ve ever been to. Sadly, they did run out of money a few years ago and never re-opened. Oh, and the turtle Dean spotted is Testudo, the UMD College Park mascot. People rub his nose for good luck and leave him offerings of junk food at exam time.


	9. Don't You Forget About Me

“Amara?”

With an indulgent smile, Amara reaches out to squeeze Dean’s hand where it’s resting on top of the small table between them.

Dean’s already running out of patience for this whole thing.

“Mind telling me what the hell is going on? Where are we and… and why?!”

Amara straightens up and looks vaguely affronted. “You’d think after everything I’ve done for you and your brother, I would rate a polite greeting at least.”

Dean takes a deep breath, praying for patience to whoever the hell might be listening anymore. “Since we’re talking about politeness, it ain’t exactly polite to magic people through some kind of portal without their consent.”

Amara softens a little at that. “I wish it hadn’t been necessary. But I had to make sure you’d hear me out. That meant getting you alone and in a place where you can’t walk away.”

Apprehension coiling in his gut, Dean looks around. He’s in a large, soaring room carpeted in a rich, black-and-gold pattern. Artfully curled, gilded light fixtures bathe everything in a soft, mellow glow. There is a large buffet in the center of the room, and something like 30 small tables arrayed on all sides of it.

With a start, Dean notices that some of the tables are occupied by people in evening dress. They’re completely still, as though frozen in time.

“What did you do to them?” Dean asks, not sure he wants to know the answer.

Amara waves a dismissive hand at him. “They’re fine. As soon as we leave, they’ll go back to their dinners. They’ll never know we were even here.”

“Then… where are we?”

Amara smiles at that. “One of my favorite views of Washington, DC. So you haven’t gone far.”

Something else occurs to Dean, and it probably should have sooner, but his brain’s still unscrambling itself from whatever the hell happened when he went through that portal. “Where’s Sam? And Cas? Are they OK?”

“They’re still in the woods. They’ll be fine.”

Dean almost sags with relief, but then remembers, “We were hunting something. A monster. What about…?”

Amara chuckles; a deep, throaty thing. “They won’t find Baphomet in those woods. That’s actually what I needed to talk to you about. I need your blood to summon him.”

When Dean gapes at her, she hums thoughtfully. “Huh. I meant to work up to that. Oh well.”

Dean’s brain feels slow and sluggish, trying hard to catch up with this weird new reality it’s finding itself in. “Wait. So, the summoning spells. The pentagrams.”

Amara folds her long, well-manicured heads and smiles thoughtfully at the stunning view outside. “Completely fake. I left them for you to find. I included the caduceus and goat head, hoping either you or your brother would make the connection to Baphomet.”

“Um,” Dean says, still fighting a quiet battle for coherence with his own head. “Why?”

Amara scans him with her eyes; a deep, penetrating look. The kind of look that reminds Dean of the days when he was irresistibly drawn to her. He still feels that weird, instinctive compulsion to get closer, but he’s more convinced than ever that it’s neither love nor sexual desire. He knows what those feel like. He felt them both earlier that day, in a dingy little motel room in suburban Maryland.

“Because I was hoping my little bread crumbs would encourage you to research Baphomet’s nature and history. I was hoping you would understand that it's an entity that is not inherently evil, despite its association with satanic worship. In fact, it's unique in how malleable it is.” Amara cocks her head at Dean, deep-brown eyes boring into him, trying to make him understand. “I thought maybe if you learned that Baphomet’s nature can be shaped to serve whatever purpose it needs to serve… you would be more receptive to what I need from you.”

“My blood,” Dean hears himself say, because that’s the part of this whole, incredibly confusing ordeal that’s definitely stuck with him.

“Yes,” Amara agrees. “But perhaps we’d better bring your little angel friend in on this conversation. I need his help too, you know. Excuse me.”

In a blink, she’s gone. Before Dean can even start to worry about that, she’s back, clutching a wild-eyed, extremely confused Cas by the sleeve of his coat.

Cas’s eyes light on Dean and his whole body sags with relief. “Dean. Sam and I, we were trying to find you, but…” He breaks off and takes a look at his surroundings. Visibly filing that information away for later, he returns his attention to Dean, eyes brimming with concern. “Are you alright?”

Dean waves him off, but can’t deny the warm bubble in his chest at seeing Cas, here, whole, unharmed. “I’m fine. You?”

Cas just nods and tugs at Amara’s hand with grumpy emphasis. She shrugs and lets him go. Cas grabs a chair from an adjacent table, pointedly moving it to Dean’s side of the table and staring down an all-powerful cosmic entity like she’s a bit of dirt he found under his shoe. “Why did you bring us here?”

With a sigh, Amara launches into a slightly abbreviated recap of her conversation with Dean so far. Dean takes that chance to look Cas up and down and reach out his hand, touching the side of Cas’s leg with his index finger; a question as much as a caress.

Cas doesn’t smile, but something shifts behind his eyes as he listens to Amara, and he reaches for Dean’s hand under the table, running a calming thumb over Dean’s knuckles. Dean feels the tension bleed out of him. Whatever the hell this is, at least they’re in it together.

“What you still haven’t told us,” Cas is saying now, “is why you want to summon Baphomet in the first place.”

For the first time, Amara looks hesitant, her air of supreme confidence slipping around the edges. “When I absorbed Chuck’s power, I didn’t doubt that I’d be able to contain it alongside my own and maintain the balance,” she says, slowly, choosing her words. “It seems I was wrong. I’ve run into some… limitations.”

Dean frowns. “What limitations?”

“So far, nothing that needs immediate attention, except for the one thing. Monsters.”

Cas studies her, interest evident on his face. “One of Chuck’s powers was to keep monsters in check. To keep the forces of the supernatural from taking over and subduing humanity. Is that what you’re referring to?”

Amara nods at him, looking impressed despite herself. “Look at that. Maybe there’s more to that pretty little head of yours than I thought.”

“Hey,” Dean says, way too loudly in the quiet, cavernous space. He’s feeling extremely offended on Cas’s behalf for some reason.

“It’s fine, Dean,” Cas says, squeezing Dean’s hand under the table to underline the message. “How do you know this is a concern? We haven’t noticed any difference in the number or powers of the monsters we’ve been fighting.”

“Not yet,” Amara says, once again addressing the view outside the window. “But I can feel my control slipping. I need to transfer it to another entity capable of maintaining control indefinitely.”

“Baphomet,” Cas says, nodding slowly.

“Yes,” Amara agrees.

“It seems like a good plan. The entity’s hermaphroditic, malleable nature would make it the perfect receptacle.” But then Cas frowns, like he’s spotted a flaw somewhere. “How are you planning to contain Baphomet once it’s absorbed this power? How will you keep it from slipping out of your control?”

“I won’t be the one controlling it,” Amara says, looking pleased with herself and clearly working up to some kind of big reveal. “Heaven will be doing that for me.”

Feeling the need to remind everyone that he’s still there, Dean grits out, “Someone mind telling me where the hell my blood comes into this whole thing? And why the hell does it need to be _my_ blood anyway?”

Amara looks annoyed at the interruption, but Cas gives Dean a reassuring nod. “That’s a good point.”

Amara sighs, apparently resigning herself to explaining the pesky details of whatever the hell kind of blood voodoo she’s planning. “As I said, Baphomet is malleable, and so is the spell to summon it. The more powerful the ingredients used in the spell, the more powerful the resulting manifestation will be. Blood is one of the spell’s essential ingredients; and there are few things more powerful in this world than the blood of a human whose soul has been claimed by an angel.”

Dean’s throat is suddenly dry. “What do you mean, claimed?”

“When I raised you from hell.” Cas’s voice sounds outwardly calm, but the hand in Dean’s own tenses ever so slightly. “I had to leave a mark on your soul to claim you as mine. It was the only way to ensure the demons would let me pass.”

Dean looks down at himself, amazed there isn’t some giant, gaping pit where his stomach used to be. He thinks of that thread that’s always seemed to tie him to Cas. In his weaker moments, he’d thought maybe it was love. Turns out he was wrong. It was some kind of weird angel mojo, pushing him toward Cas.

Dean lets go of Cas’s hand and blinks. Once, twice, three times. Trying to keep the room from spinning.

Vaguely, Dean feels Cas touch his shoulder and say his name; tentative, questioning.

Then, Amara’s voice sounds in his ear, far away but tinged with amusement. “What am I picking up from you two?”

“Dean, if you’d just let me explain…”

“What the fuck, Cas?” Dean hears himself say, much louder than he’d intended.

Cas flinches, looking like Dean’s just punched him in the face. He kind of feels like doing that. “Why the hell didn’t you ever tell me?”

“I didn’t think there would be any lingering effects,” Cas says, quiet and uncertain in a way Dean can’t remember ever hearing from him before. He doesn’t like it, but he can’t seem to get his blood to stop boiling, especially when he thinks about their time together in the motel room — was it really just a few hours ago?

“Dean, I don’t think it has anything to do with… with what we’ve shared these past few weeks.” Cas is still speaking quietly, but his voice has taken on an urgent, almost desperate edge. “I swear, I never compelled you into anything. What I feel for you, it…”

“Don’t,” Dean says, and he hates how cold it sounds, but he can’t stop himself. He can’t let any of this in. Not when they’re still here, in this weird, frozen place, with an all-powerful being sitting across the table and watching them avidly, like this is some kind of telenovela to her.

Apparently sensing the show is over for now, Amara says, “Well, as fascinating as all this is, it does bring us to why you’re here, Castiel.”

Dean can’t make himself look Cas in the face, but he can see his friend’s reflection in the window glass, and he looks stricken.

“The spell also requires the grace of an angel. Ideally, the same angel who has claimed the human,” she says casually, as though that’s not a sore subject right now at all.

Still looking at Cas’s reflection, Dean sees him stiffen with reluctance, about to bring up another sore subject. “My grace,” he says, voice carefully emotionless. “It’s been fading. I’m not sure there would be enough.”

Amara nods thoughtfully, studying Cas. “I think there is. But only just. I’m going to need all of it.”

That gets Dean’s attention. “Wait, you want Cas to give up his grace for a goddamn summoning spell? Not gonna happen.”

“That’s not your decision to make, Dean,” Cas says, and even through his haze of anger, Dean really wishes he could tell what’s going on in Cas’s head right now, because his face is an absolute blank. “It’s mine. And I’ve made it.”

Cas looks over at Amara, eyes blazing with the authority you only get from commanding Heaven’s armies for a few thousand years. “Would you excuse us for a moment?”

“Would I…?” Amara looks like she wants to launch into a speech about showing proper respect for omnipotent beings, but eventually, she says, “You’re lucky I wanted to freshen up anyway. You’ve got five minutes.”

And she’s gone.

Cas turns to Dean, eyes blazing with urgency. “Dean, when Jack told me he thought I wanted to be human, I didn’t believe him. It seemed ridiculous. I tried being human, and I was awful at it. I was miserable. But Jack also said that I wanted to be human so I could be with you. And over time, I realized he was right. I was miserable that first time around largely because I wasn’t with you. I felt lost and rejected, and that’s why I stole another angel’s grace. I thought if I regained my powers, I’d be useful to you again and you’d want me to come back to you.”

Guilt squirms in Dean’s stomach like an unruly animal, but it still has to fight its way to the surface alongside the anger and hurt boiling in his blood. So he doesn’t say anything.

Cas runs a hand over his face, visibly forcing himself to continue. “In recent weeks, it’s become clear to me that I don’t want to be an angel if it means watching you grow old and die without me. I don’t want to be an angel, because I know it’ll leave me alone and lost, just as I was before.”

Cas reaches out for Dean’s hand, clenched into a fist on top of his thigh. He doesn’t open it to Cas’s touch, but he doesn’t pull away either as Cas keeps talking, words coming faster now. “Then we hunted the jinn. When it touched me, I saw… I saw us, Dean. You and I, waking up together every day, cooking meals, taking care of Jack and Sam. Just… being happy. Being human, together.”

Dean realizes that somewhere along the line, he forgot to breathe. He inhales, deeply, and it’s a little bit shakier than he would like. “Cas, how do I know for sure that any of this is real? It’s Chuck all over again, man.” His voice is definitely breaking now, but the words keep coming anyway. “I can’t do this. I can’t… trust something like that.”

Cas’s hand tightens on top of his and he lowers his head, trying to catch Dean’s eye. It works. Dean’s never really been able to resist those eyes. And that’s the problem, isn’t it?

“Dean, what can I say to convince you that I would never, never do anything if I didn’t think you wanted it too? What I’ve just said… you’re not obligated to do anything about it. If you want, you can tell me to leave and never come back. We do this one last thing together; my grace and your blood for the summoning spell. And then I’ll let you live your life in whatever way you choose.”

They stare at each other for a long moment, neither moving a muscle. Finally, Dean nods. “Yeah, okay.”

Amara chooses that moment to reappear, and Dean takes a second to wonder whether she’s been there the whole time, invisible and waiting them out.

She pretty much confirms it when she says, “Well, now that’s settled, we should all head to Heaven.”

Dean frowns, hurt and confusion making him feel more sluggish than ever. “Heaven?”

“Oh yes. Didn’t I mention? That’s where we’re going to perform the spell.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn’t going to turn this into an angsty fic. I really wasn’t. But somehow the characters weren’t playing along, and Dean always does seem to want to overreact to all things Cas. So here we are. It’ll get better soon, I promise!
> 
> Also, the room where Amara takes Dean and Cas is based on a dining room at the MGM National Harbor casino, just outside Washington, DC.


	10. Heaven Can't Wait

With a touch, Amara transports them both to the playground. A bored-looking, overweight man lounges against the climbing structure, looking the new arrivals up and down. When his eyes fall on Amara, he straightens up abruptly.

“The Darkness,” he sputters. “At Heaven’s gate.”

Amara rolls her eyes at him and snaps her fingers. Instantly, the angel’s vessel falls unconscious and crumples, blue Grace swirling from his mouth and making its way towards the sandbox, where a ring of white light is beginning to glow in welcome.

Cas steps up to the glow and speaks calmly, all the devastating emotion from a moment ago gone from his voice and face. “This is Castiel. I am here with Dean Winchester and our Father’s sister. We need to speak to Jack.”

The white light fades and, for a moment, nothing happens. Then, in the blink of an eye, Jack appears in the middle of the sandbox.

“Hello,” he says, right hand raised in a small wave and face stretched with a warm grin. Dean’s chest expands at the sight. Yeah, he’s definitely missed the kid.

Jack cocks his head at Cas, grin fading a little. “Hey, Cas. It’s good to see you.”

“Hello, Jack,” Cas says and steps forward, enveloping Jack in a tight hug. Coming straight to the point as always, he adds, “I want to apologize for our fight. You were right. I hope you’re not angry with me anymore.”

Jack looks delighted when they break apart. “I’m so glad. I didn’t mean to make you angry, but I really thought you should know what I saw in your mind.”

Jack’s eyes slide over to Dean then, looking uncertain. “Does that mean you two…?”

Cas cuts him off. “Now is not the time, Jack. We can talk more later. Let me tell you why we’re actually here.”

Between the two of them, Cas and Amara lay out the details of their plan. Amara explains that Heaven is the ideal location for the summoning spell because it’s more heavily warded than anywhere else in the universe. Dean’s mind starts to drift when, for the third time that night, he feels his body and soul disintegrating and reassembling somewhere completely different.

“Fuck! People really need to stop doing that. Doesn’t anybody walk anymore?”

Cas is next to him, looking like he wants to provide comfort but isn’t sure he’ll be allowed. “It’s the only way, Dean. Walking to this place would take something like five human lifetimes.”

Dean scoffs and looks around, taking in the space where they now find themselves. There isn’t much to look at. It’s bright and clean and white, but there don’t seem to be any walls or ceilings or anything, really.

Except for the dentist’s chair that Dean would swear wasn’t there a moment ago. It’s flanked by an instrument tray containing two syringes.

“What the hell is this place?” He throws the question out to the whole room, if that’s what you can call this place, happy to get any kind of answer from anyone at this point.

“It’s the Room of Requirement,” Jack says happily. “Or at least that’s the best way to explain it.”

“The… you mean like in _Harry Potter_?”

“Yes.” Jack nods, looking even more pleased if that’s possible. “It contains nothing and everything. It can be and provide anything you need it to.”

“This is where you plan to summon Baphomet,” Cas says, nodding approvingly. “The room should mold itself to become the perfect containment chamber for its power.”

Amara crosses her arms, rolling a dramatic pair of eyes at where the ceiling would be. “If we’re all done chatting, let’s get this show on the road. You first, Dean.”

“Wait a minute,” he says, feeling like this entire thing has spun way out of his control. “I never actually agreed to this. How do I know this is going to work? How do I know you’re not about to do something weird to my blood or unleash some kind of world-ending threat that Sammy and I have to clean up after?”

Cas turns to him and fixes him with that irresistible, blue-eyed stare of his. “Dean, I know you’re not inclined to trust me at the moment, and I know you don’t trust Amara.” Off to the side of their conversation, Amara makes a sound somewhere between annoyance and wounded dignity. “But you trust Jack, don’t you? He believes this is for the best as well.”

Jack nods helpfully at that. “I think Amara is telling the truth. And I don’t think she would let any part of Chuck’s power out of her control unless she had to.”

“Alright, fine,” Dean sighs, recognizing a lost cause. “You do the honors, Cas. I’m not letting a three-year-old anywhere near me with a needle.”

He rolls up the sleeve of his shirt and settles into the chair, watching as Cas ties off his arm. Before he knows it, one of the syringes is filled with his blood and Cas has passed his hand over the needle mark, healing it instantly.

“Your turn, angel,” Amara says with a smile that’s altogether too sinister for Dean’s liking. Dean steps away from the chair and makes room as Cas moves in, looking grim and determined.

Suddenly, Dean finds that he can’t not say something. “Cas, you know you don’t have to do this, right? There’s always another way. Always. What if… what if you get hurt?”

“I’ll be fine, Dean,” Cas says, a small, gentle smile on his face. “Please don’t worry. This is what I want. It’s a little… faster than expected, but it’s still what I want.”

As Cas leans back in the chair and Amara steps up to take hold of the much larger second syringe on the instrument tray, Dean can’t help himself. He steps up next to Cas and takes his hand. Cas squeezes it. “I meant what I said, Dean. You have no obligation towards me whatsoever. If you want me to walk away after this and never bother you again, then that’s what I’ll do.”

Dean wants to reply, he really does, but anything he would have said is forgotten when Amara plunges the giant needle into Cas’s neck and his screams fill the bright, featureless void as electric blue liquid starts to curl into the syringe. Dean focuses on holding on to Cas’s hand where it still rests in his, wondering whether Cas has enough angelic strength left to break every last one of his finger bones.

Suddenly, the pain and noise stop, and Dean realizes he’s closed his eyes. His knees hurt where they must have, at some point, hit the floor.

The floor that looks incredibly familiar.

Dean straightens up and looks around. He’s in the bunker’s war room, right next to the map table. “What the hell?”

Dean figures the obvious answer is that either Amara or Jack has sent him back here; after all, he’s done his part. After a second, Dean realizes there’s another body slumped on the floor next to him.

Cas.

A thrill of fear jolts through him as he bends over and feels for a pulse. It’s there, strong and steady. Dean almost melts with relief.

“Hey, Cas? Cas?”

Cas’s eyelashes flutter, and Dean doesn’t even remember why he was angry. Cas is here, and he’s alive, and somehow this’ll all work out. As soon as Cas’s eyes are open, Dean pulls him into a tight hug.

“You OK there, buddy?” he mumbles into the creased fabric of Cas’s coat. Even through two layers of fabric, he can feel Cas’s tired smile against his shoulder.

“I’m fine, Dean.”

“Are you…?”

Cas closes his eyes for a moment. As far as Dean can tell from the outside, he’s doing some kind of check-up on himself. “Yes, I think I must be. I’m very hungry.”

***

They head to the kitchen, and Dean throws together a grilled cheese with a side of canned chicken soup.

At some point, Sam calls Dean’s other, other, other cell; the one he left back at the bunker when they set out for the jinn hunt weeks ago.

“What the hell happened to you guys?” are the first words out of Sam’s mouth when Dean picks up and plants the phone on the table between him and Cas while they wolf down the last few bites of their sandwiches.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Sammy.”

“Try me.”

Dean runs a tired hand over his face, looking at Cas, who is focused on his food to the point of not being even slightly interested in a phone conversation. “It’s kind of a long story, but I’m fine, Cas is human and we’re back at the bunker.”

“You’re… Cas… what?!”

“Seriously, Sam. Long story, and we’re pretty tired. Can you drive Baby back home for me, and I promise I’ll fill you in tomorrow?”

There’s a grumpy grunt over the line. Then: “Fine.”

“Thanks, Sammy. I owe you.”

Just as Dean starts to clear away the dishes and try to work up the nerve to have an actual conversation with Cas, Jack appears out of nowhere. It’s a good thing Dean had the plates already poised over the sink, because none of them actually break when Dean damn near jumps out of his skin and drops the entire stack.

“Hello,” Jack says, apparently oblivious to the extremely startling nature of his appearance.

“I thought you both might want to know that the spell worked. Amara and I summoned Baphomet and Amara transferred her power. The warding seemed to keep everything contained. I think we’re OK for now.”

Dean wipes a shaky hand across his face, still trying to recover from watching a nephilim pop into existence in his kitchen. “That’s fine. ‘For now’ is good enough, um, for now.”

Cas smiles at Jack from where he’s sitting on the bench next to the kitchen table, but looks just as rattled as Dean feels. “Thank you for telling us, Jack.”

Jack’s eyes wander from Cas to Dean and back again. “Are you two… OK?”

“We’re fine, Jack,” Cas says in his best, reassuring Dad voice. The one that’s only for Jack, but it works a little bit on Dean too.

“OK then. I’ll leave you guys alone. You’re probably tired.”

“Just a bit,” Dean agrees, but then steps forward to give Jack a hug. “Thanks, kid.”

When Dean lets go, Jack’s practically glowing. Not the cosmic-powers kind of glow; the regular, human, “just-got-hugged” one.

“You’re welcome. I’ll come visit again soon.”

And with that, he’s gone again.

Which leaves just Dean and Cas, and no food to distract them.

Before Dean can figure out what the hell to say, Cas starts talking.

“Dean, if you still want me to leave, I will. Just… I’d like to get a few hours of sleep first if that’s OK.”

Dean looks at Cas. Really looks. Closes his eyes and looks again. He wants nothing more than to close the distance between them and find out what’s on the other side.

And there’s his answer, isn’t it? Cas’s grace is gone, but that thread connecting them, that irresistible something pulling him in — it’s still there.

“What if I wanted you to stay?” Dean hears himself say.

“Stay in the bunker?” Cas asks, frowning.

“Yeah. And… and with me.”

Something hopeful flickers to life in the back of Cas’s eyes. He gets up from the bench and takes a couple of hesitant steps towards Dean. “If you… if you wanted me to stay, I would ask you to promise me you won’t change your mind by the time we wake up tomorrow. I would say that I need you to be sure.”

“I’ve never been so sure of anything in my whole damn life,” Dean says, and he’s surprised to find how much he means it.

They meet each other halfway, lips fitting together and arms wrapped in a tight embrace. That aura of power around Cas is gone now, but somehow he feels the same, tastes the same. The crackle of lightning with every touch of his skin is still there; it just doesn’t feel dangerous anymore. It feels right.

Arm in arm, they stumble into Dean’s room and undress down to their boxers and undershirts. Both too tired to try anything else, they slip under the sheets together, Dean turning his back to Cas and letting himself be held.

As he starts to drift off, Dean grins, a thought suddenly occurring to him. “Hey Cas?”

A half-awake grunt at Dean’s back is the only response.

“You wanna go see the ball of twine tomorrow?”

“Go to sleep, Dean,” Cas says, trying to sound grumpy, but Dean hears the smile in it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Again, I'd love to hear your thoughts on any and all of this or even just your kudos if you think it's deserved. These are the things that keep me going.
> 
> Stay safe out there and come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://friendofcarlotta.tumblr.com).
> 
> If you take a minute to [reblog this fic](https://friendofcarlotta.tumblr.com/post/613888087995629568/the-memory-remains), you'll be my new favorite person.


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